Running
by T.S. Blue
Summary: Two forces hurtling blindly along a path toward refuge or disaster; the Duke boys on the run. From revenuers, for their lives, and even from each other. An in-depth look at the impact on both Bo and Luke of Luke's induction into the Marines. Rated T for violence, language. Complete.
1. Prologue

_**Author's Note: **This one's been coming for a long time, developing rather slowly and painfully. Thus far I know this much about it: it is long._

_Normally I feel it is best not to introduce too much realism into Hazzard County. After all, realism sort of negates a lot of defining characteristics of the show. And heck, characters like Rosco and Boss might disappear all together if said realism doesn't get wielded really carefully. _

_But I did a ton of research on this one to keep it reasonably accurate. I say "reasonably" because there are, as a means of saving my sanity, liberties taken. (This is why I love fiction vs. my day job, which contains no liberties whatsoever.) And in order to appease the two opposing desires on my part, the realistic events in this story largely happen outside of Hazzard._

_You know what I don't own or earn, and you'll see my original characters as they come by. Thanks in advance to all who read and review. I'll keep future author's notes to a minimum, but I think there will be other disclaimers along the way._

* * *

**Prologue**

Black encased in darkness, gliding through gloom, chased by the dim. Two forces hurtling blindly along a path toward refuge or disaster – a reckless heap of high-speed subtleties, at least to the eyes. Fortunately there are other senses, even if most of them are made useless by distance.

"He's still back there," Bo reports from where his head is cocked out the window, hair in his eyes, but his ear clear of any obstructions.

"Come on, Harve," Luke grouses, because he's got a job to do. Simple when it comes down to it, nothing like what some of those poor guys he graduated with back in June got stuck doing. Punching a clock at eight in the morning, assuming they're lucky enough to be on the day shift, then eight hours the same repetitive activity until they get to punch out and take their bored and exhausted selves home.

Whereas the Dukes are lucky enough to have inherited the family business. It might keep them up half the night, but who could sleep anyway when they're being chased through the murky night at speeds approaching a hundred miles per hour?

Nevertheless, it's a job, one that only pays when it's complete, and just because the Duke boys enjoy their work doesn't mean they really want to spend the _whole_ night doing it.

"You could lose him," is Bo's innocuous suggestion. Casual almost, in a way that only someone watching from the passenger seat can be. "Up here on dead man's curve."

There's a reason they call it that. "I ain't got no interest in killing him, cuz," comes Luke's testy answer, because Harvey Essex may be a revenuer, could have his sights on sending two young Dukes up the river for an unspecified amount of time (though with Bo being technically a minor, maybe just a misdemeanor charge against him), but the man's got a wife at home, and kids. Besides, "Jesse would whip our tails," right out of town and into jail himself if he thought they'd done it on purpose, "if we let that happen."

Huff of air, blonde fluff flying everywhere in deference to the wind and the violence of the pout Bo's putting on. "I ain't talking about that," gets griped back at him. "I mean the meadow just after. There's that path," which is nothing more than a gap between two trees, barely car-width. "He wouldn't follow you there."

Of course Harvey wouldn't; the man has some sense. "Ain't no way to spot that sucker at night," Luke informs him. Not going ninety-five miles per hour, even if there is a sliver of moon and spotty starlight to see by. Those are hardly enough for him to keep track of the white line at the right edge of the road, which is just about the only thing that's going to keep _them_ from flying off the edge of dead man's curve in a minute or so, and plunging into the darkness of the valley below.

"Sure you can," comes the confident explanation from his right. "There's that white boulder just before it."

Which ought to speak of the danger right there. It's not so much a white rock as a paint transfer, a scraped surface from where a semi took the turn too fast for the weight of its cargo. Bo might not remember when that happened, having been nothing more than a bubble-gum chewing pre-teen at the time, but Luke can recollect overhearing Sheriff Rosco's tales of picking up pieces of that truck's hide from here to Chickasaw. As to the driver, well, Uncle Jesse had started coughing when the sheriff got to that part. Hacking like he had a two-pack-a-day habit, when everyone knew he'd never smoked in his life. And when the choking fit was done, his uncle had said something about children, which Luke certainly hadn't been at the time, and then taken the conversation off to the far reaches of the farmyard.

"It ain't safe, Bo."

But it's more than ignorance (which might even be willful – seems like all of Hazzard talked about that truck accident for days, and even took up a collection to help the poor driver's widow get back on her feet and there's no way his cousin could have missed all the activity) that makes Bo suggest a crazy stunt like skirting off into that high meadow. It's the fact that the boy can see through the dark better than any Duke ever has, could spot an ant crawling across a piece of coal in the middle of a blacked out night from a hundred paces away.

"You could let me drive," sounds exactly like pride mixed with frustration from the kid stuck in the passenger seat.

Because his cousin could do it, could find that opening and guide them right through it at high speed, leaving Harvey Essex to follow the road and wonder what on earth happened to the car whose bumper he was trailing just seconds ago. And after the revenuer spent an hour searching the roads, he'd finally find his way to that little farmhouse set back from Old Mill Road, hat in hand, head bowed and admitting to one Jesse Duke about how he must have chased those boys of his off the cliff, and he really didn't mean to but… a broken-hearted little confession that would get interrupted by the growl of engine, a squeal of brakes, and two clearly-not-dead boys hollering and laughing as they pulled themselves out of one black Ford Galaxie without even the smallest ding in her perfect black matte skin. But—

"Jesse'd kill me," if he so much as let the baby of the family touch the steering wheel on a moonshine run. An arbitrary rule, or at least an unexplained one. Bo is, after all, supposed to be learning this part of the trade from Luke, but it's not like there's anything left to teach a boy who first got behind the wheel at age thirteen, then pretty much mastered every trick set in front of him before he'd even grown up enough to notice girls. "Just," frustration now, because they're getting close to do-or-die, and also because Luke's not thrilled about this next part. "Call in the dogs."

Giggles of victory from Bo, as if they have any time for those. Then, "Woof, woof," he calls into the CB mic that he just keyed. Followed by, "We're at mile marker thirty-eight."

Things happen fast then – dead man's curve on which Luke speeds and Harvey, in his glowing white Plymouth, slows in deference to some desire to live through the night. The bridge just beyond and the trade off of one white vehicle on their tail for another. Daisy, in the pickup, laying down a fine coat of oil. The bump that signifies the end of the span through the brief moment in which they are airborne, and then there's more light than their dilated eyes can stand to look at in their rearview. Screeching skid, bang and thump, and they can take their time on the rest of this delivery.

"Jesse," Luke calls, taking the CB mic from where it's resting casually in Bo's fingers. "Everyone all right?"

"I reckon," comes back at him. "But when you get a chance," by which he means after the delivery is made, because a job is a job and it's got to be done. "You might want to bring your friend Cooter back this way."

Because even if he is a revenuer, old Harvey Essex has a right to all the assistance they can muster in getting his car back out from the ditch into which it just slid.

"Yee-haw," Bo hollers, even if their escape wasn't half as interesting as it might have been had the youngster been behind the wheel.


	2. Part One, Chapter One

_**Author's Note: **This was supposed to go up this morning, but life got in the way. _

_The timeframe of this story is well before the start of the series, so I gave Rosco/Hazzard County a virtual posse of deputies, based on the pilot when he really did seem to have a bunch. Other than that, I don't think there are any real surprises coming here._

* * *

**Part One – Waiting  
****Chapter One**

_January 1971_

She calls herself Summer and if he knows it's not her real name, that only makes her all the more appealing. She's warmth in the middle of a deep freeze, the worst seen this far south since all the old-timers were children and had to chip the ice layer from the top of the trough before the livestock could get a drink each morning. At least that's how it's always gotten told, followed by tales that twist and turn like the frozen mountain footpaths the oldsters claim they had to march over in order to get to school in those days, even if the cornerstone on the Hazzard School, just two flatland miles from the Duke Farm, is older than any of them. It's a lazy county, this place he grew up, recycling old lies for new generations, doing slow loops around the same circles it has since Uncle Jesse was his age some thirty-odd years ago.

Which is part of what makes Summer so appealing. She's an interloper, a foreigner, most likely a transient, and no one to hold him to anything. She wasn't in his third grade glass, doesn't know the tale of how Luke Duke dropped a frog down Missy Kelty's dress in the middle of a lesson on fractions and got himself called Frogman – with equal amounts of disgust and admiration – by the rest of his classmates for the next two years. She didn't see him duck away from every fastball pitch for a full season after getting beaned in the ear during his first year of high school, and she doesn't care what his family does to put food on the table, hasn't heard the stories of an orphaned threesome of cousins being raised half-feral by an old moonshiner. She might have gotten wind of a few drifting tales about how many girls he's gone through since he was a pimple-faced barely-teen that let pretty little Ima Jo Martin break his heart, but he bears no shame about those. Not when Summer, whose mama probably named her Mary in hopes that she'd stay pure for her whole life, is currently bunking with Miss Mabel's crowd in one of the RVs hidden out on the old Potter's Lane. From all accounts she's just a drifter in need of a bed, she cooks and cleans for the other girls and otherwise abstains from involving herself in their lifestyle, but she's not chaste and doesn't expect Luke to be either.

She doesn't ask for much, no promises of anything more than a steady Monday and Thursday night out with him, doesn't probe him or even grumble about how he can't be with her on weekends, doesn't care that one short year ago he was Hazzard High's star quarterback, infamous for wasting time with each and every cheerleader after Friday night games. She never wonders how it is that he could graduate by the skin of his teeth when he's clearly, in the words of educators and guardians alike, _smarter than that_, doesn't mutter under her breath about whether his aspirations are really so simple as dedicating himself to the family business. She doesn't seem to think twice about how Sheriff Rosco can be found around just about any corner they turn when he takes her out for drives, doesn't mind how half the time his little cousin joins them with whatever sort of a date he can scare up in tow.

In short, she fits perfectly within his current lifestyle, and that's the most important thing she could do.

* * *

Now that the days are short and the chores pretty much come down to feeding the few animals they've got then collecting what the livestock provides in return, he realizes the injustice of it all. Or maybe it's the fact that when Jesse gets tired of chicken Luke heads off into the woods by himself on a Wednesday afternoon while Bo's stuck in the middle of listening (again) to a lecture about the assassination of Archduke Something-or-other, and by the time Saturday rolls around and he's free to join the hunt, his cousin's back with enough meat to feed them until spring.

It's not like Bo's that much younger, really, than either of his cousins. Born just barely two years after Luke, and it's no fair that he got stuck three years behind in school. Scarcely a Sophomore now to his cousin's complete freedom, the difference between being born in September and November – well, that and Aunt Lavinia's influence when they were nothing more than a trio of brats making a mess of her tidy household. _Luke's too smart to wait another year before starting school _(so smart he'd figured out where she hid the cookies, found the moonshine under the sink and dismantled the radio until there was nothing but a pile of circuits left); _born just after the September first cutoff, any chance he could be admitted to first grade before his sixth birthday?_ And old Mr. Murray, the worn out principal with paper-thin wrinkled skin and drooping brown eyes that always seemed like they'd make more sense in a bulldog's face, had relented.

Funny how Lavinia hadn't been as eager to let her younger two rush off to school, interesting to imagine now how he might have been all for going to school at the time. He can vaguely remember wanting to follow off wherever Luke led, even if his cousin never seemed real eager to go there himself and came home complaining all the way about how he had to sit up at the kitchen table with a notebook and pencil until he'd finished whatever schoolwork had followed him home. Didn't matter back then how little Bo liked a thing, doing it with Luke made it all right. His guardians should have taken advantage of his enthusiasm at the time and sent him to school early too; he'd be that much closer to done now.

And then there's Daisy, born in June, not even a half year older than him, but she'll finish a full year before he does, and that part's definitely not fair. The girl's never shown any real interest in hunting, would rather rescue baby animals than stalk their parents (though she seems perfectly willing to cook whatever gets brought home to her, and come eating time, she digs in just as deeply as any of them) and wouldn't disappear with Luke for days on end even if she could. Would seem only fair and perfectly sensible if she'd take one of his years off of his hands; the girl halfway likes school anyway. She could have all thirty months he's got left, as far as Bo is concerned.

Not that he hasn't learned a few things since those days when he was small enough to hide in the hem of his Aunt Lavinia's skirt.

"Bo Duke." It's not a question, that can't be good. If it were, he could come out with something along the lines of _nineteen-oh-eight_ and then shrug his shoulders when crabby old Miss Price made that sour face she uses when an answer is way off base.

But if there's no question, there's no answer, right or wrong, that he can give. So he just looks up at her and lets his blue eyes go wide, because they have a history of going a long way to soften any woman's heart. Smiles broadly, showing his perfectly straight teeth that frequently aid and abet his attempts to flirt his way out of trouble.

These, too, are skills learned by keeping pace with his oldest cousin, dating at an equal rate, riding shotgun on weekend whiskey deliveries where there's the increasingly frequent need to shuck and jive their way past both the federal and the local law. Summers of overnights at the still, and if he has no desire to spend his post-graduation years "cooking" he has figured out a few evasive maneuvers by working with Luke there, sneaking in and out of the woods by a new path each time.

"Yes, Ma'am?" he tries, because if all else fails, whip out the charm. He's about to tell her how pretty she looks when that finger comes out, pointing at him.

"Office," is all she says. Seems to him like the entire staff of the Hazzard School might be plenty happy to see him permanently exit their doors early, too.

* * *

"It just seems like," might be pushing his luck. He's already been grumbled at a few times, had a wide finger pointed into his chest once or twice, and gotten reminded about the consequences of sassing his elders. "It wouldn't hurt anything." Other than his hide, which is apparently begging for a tanning right about now if that glower in the old man's eyes is any indication.

Cold night to be sitting out here on frozen logs with no more shelter than dried kudzu draping over a wooden frame hardly taller than him, barely wide enough to camouflage the object that is key to Duke survival. Crude rock fireplace, hydrometer, capped pot and copper coil, all of which can be dismantled and reassembled on the other side of the county in just over two hours, and he might have preferred one of their older still sites in this bitter chill. His favorite, in the deeply wooded southeastern corner of their own land, got itself permanently abandoned some seven years back when Commissioner Buford passed on to the great beyond, leaving his position vulnerable to usurpation by a man with a frightening lack of scruples. Jefferson Davis Hogg, who just happens to have his own hidden distillery somewhere in this same two-hundred-square-mile county, and the first thing the new Commissioner did was to inform the duly constituted law in Hazzard that their primary responsibility was to arrest competing moonshiners, and then he'd issued standing search warrants for properties owned by anyone known to earn their living from the trade. So the Dukes had slipped away in the night, creating a new still site every year or so, and right about now he'd prefer one with more of a southern exposure, away from the wind, nestled a little lower in the hills. But they're in the middle of cooking, fire lit, mash steaming, pot and coil too hot to touch. Nothing to do but settle down for the night and make his case.

"Wouldn't hurt anything." If he ever gets another chance to talk, that is. Just the tone of those few words, and he can tell Jesse's building to a head of steam hot enough to cook up more moonshine than the still that squats in front of them. "You really reckon that him pulling some fool stunt wouldn't hurt? You crash a car at a hundred miles an hour and something's gonna get hurt." Stick poking at coals, flicking embers to the skies like tiny prayers for the safety of his kids. "He's what would get hurt."

"He ain't gonna crash, Jesse." Bo's vehicular feats aren't half as foolish as their aging uncle accuses them of being. "Besides, I'd be right there with him." Riding shotgun while his cousin took the wheel on deliveries, and he really can't understand the objection. Sure, he knows why Daisy's been kept away from the liquor and not permitted to be directly involved in any delivery. There're risks that don't get taken with the women-folk; he and Jesse are in agreement on that. But Bo, he's not any more appealing to the law or any more afraid of doing a bit of time in jail than Luke is.

"Oh," his uncle says, rolling his eyes around from where he's been sniffing the mash for potency. "So you'd both get hurt. Well, then, that makes it much better."

Sarcasm, precisely the tone that would get Luke's backside warmed by the end of a fresh cut switch. "He's a good driver," Luke defends. It's almost easier to argue with the old man's back than his front, what with the incredulous visage he gets treated to when his uncle faces him. He lets himself get looked at, stays silent and waits for Jesse to get back to caring about his craft. Moonshining, and it wasn't his choice, nor Bo's, for this to be the family business. They didn't start it or have much of anything to do with it continuing from pre-revolutionary times to now. Hard to imagine his ancestors, dressed in waistcoats and breeches, white ponytails tied at their necks and stirring sour mash somewhere deep in the woods, but apparently that's what they did. Luke indulges these idle thoughts as a means of passing time until his uncle's fully engrossed in his work again. When the man's unsuspecting back is turned he throws out, "He's sixteen. You let me deliver by the time I was that age." And he'd spent fewer hours behind the wheel than his little cousin has when he first got trusted to drive Sweet Tilly.

"Barely sixteen," he gets reminded, is Bo's age. "And besides, you was already mostly done with school before I let you deliver. He's just a boy." Jesse Duke logic, which is just as warped and twisted as the man's rheumatic fingers, but it's nothing to be argued with. True enough that Luke was closer to graduation than Bo is now, but that's sort of a technicality, what with how Luke got to start school even if he didn't turn six until more than a week after the usual cutoff date for first grade. He's been a year ahead of himself all along, and that doesn't have a dang thing to do with Bo's driving skill. "Boy can't go through a week of school without getting himself into trouble." Which also doesn't mean much of anything. School bores him, leaves his brain idle to get up to no good. "He ain't got the concentration yet." And that right there is where Jesse's wrong; seems to Luke like a deliberate sort of wrong. When Bo's behind the wheel – that's when every bit of his brain is engaged on the task at hand, and both he and his uncle know it. "Besides," Jesse wheedles, his voice slipping up into that range that ought to get all the dogs in the county barking. "We ain't got no need to have that boy out there risking his neck. Ain't no reason you can't drive," which only goes to prove that the man's being more stubborn than smart about this. "What do you figure you're going to do with yourself anyways? Spend all your nights with that girl?" Summer, who Jesse doesn't precisely approve of, though his feelings aren't strong enough to do more than harass Luke about how Aunt Lavinia would have his hide if she was alive and he brought the girl home. "Don't get lazy on me boy."

A new variation on an old theme. Sometimes he gets to hear about the admirable ambitions of Enos Strate, who graduated from school a year ahead of him, and is presently off at the Police Academy. With the blessings of his moonshining father, and it's not like Luke could become a cop even if he wanted to, but according to his uncle, that's not the point. The opposite debate has them discussing Cooter Davenport, recently back in Hazzard after a few years of getting into one sort of trouble then another out in Texas. Now that he's local again, the Davenport boy seems to be at the center of every petty mischief in town, and if the Duke patriarch claims to like Cooter just fine, he doesn't exactly want his boys getting too close to him when trouble is afoot.

But neither of those ultimately lucky, flat-footed Hazzard boys is a reasonable comparison for Luke's current situation.

"Uncle Jesse," probably comes out as frustrated as he feels. The specifics of his thoughts aren't anything he wants to share with anyone. "I ain't going nowhere on purpose." But if he's got to bring up the subject, he reckons this dark corner of the county where if he's lucky it'll disappear into the desolation that surrounds them and never be heard by anyone else nor come to fruition, is the best place to do it. "It's just that I may not always be here, is all." Seems like enough to have to say, but Jesse's eyebrows are down, and the man's not tolerating any of what he figures to be fool nonsense. "You know I turn nineteen this year." And the old man checked the newspaper, same as him, the day after lottery numbers were drawn. Luke is pretty dang close to the top of the list of boys that could find themselves drafted into the armed services.

"Luke." If the dark-toned way his name gets said is any indication, his uncle has figured it out. "Don't go inviting trouble to come looking for you."

He sighs; all things being equal he'd be happy never even to think such a thing. But he doesn't have a choice, and his uncle has just realized that. "I just figure it might be best if Bo got in some practice now." While they can count on Luke riding shotgun with him.

"I ain't convinced," the old man warns, which is just a prelude to, "but I'll think on it."

* * *

Sideways sun, only minutes to dusk now. Luke's hand up to ward off the orange glare as he leans against the navy blue of his own fender, swirling the remaining contents of a soda can in his left hand. The cheap stuff that makes his mouth pucker with every sip, but he always drinks it anyway.

Too sweet and that might just be why Bo likes it so much. Or it could be that it's free, the benefit of coming by the garage before closing time. Best time of the year, chill of the air aside, when they have a short wait from the moment the gas pumps get turned off and the old wooden doors slide closed until darkness settles over the land and invites them out to play. Cooter bribes them with cans of soda to hang around until he can get free.

"You ain't even gonna get close," is Luke's assessment of Dobro's taunting. Friday night races, the unofficial pastime for Hazzard boys of a certain age. The usual suspects making idle threats about whose car is going to be minus a bumper by the end of the night, and this is just the warm-up. When Cooter finishes locking the doors and swaggers his way through the maze of haphazardly parked souped-up cars, the intimidation will start in earnest. Just about Bo's favorite part of the week, when he and Luke team up to teach the other guys a lesson, and Summer doesn't wedge herself into the front seat between them. Not that he minds the girl with nearly black eyes and hair to match, just curly enough for Luke to lose his fingers in. It's just that she's got a strange feel about her – temporary, and if she's not going to stay in their lives he wonders why Luke goes out with her every week, when his habit has always been to stay in constant motion like a bee pollinating flowers.

"The way I got it figured," Dobro tells the clouds in the sky from his halfway prone position, sitting on Luke's hood and leaning against the windshield. Head tipped back to guzzle down a little more fizz, and he nearly chokes before he swallows. Next words come out with a slight squeak to them, but that doesn't stop the man from shooting off his mouth, same as he does just about every time they all get together. "Y'all are gonna be spending tomorrow in the junkyard looking for bumpers and quarter panels to replace the ones I'm gonna leave lying on the side of the road." Same load of bull the man unleashes just about weekly. Earns him low grunts and snorts from Brody, who doesn't need to talk tough, because he already is. Big, powerful, and he could probably take down a bear in hand-to-hand combat – if they weren't all scared of him. Luke always responds lazily to Dobro, like he can't hardly be bothered. Bo sometimes forgets himself and snaps back against the fool's blabbering, but it's pointless. No matter whether tonight is spent leading the pack or untangling his car from a tree, Dobro will be spinning these same yarns again next week.

"You ain't gonna touch this thing," Luke reinforces, slapping his hand against his own fender to make his point. Funny how everyone lounges in or on the Falcon, which Luke bought off Cooter's father for a pittance three years ago, and has since cultivated into a powerful piece of machinery. It's not pretty; painted a dull blue and sporting square edges where newer cars are rounded, but under Luke's hand it can make even Cooter's nearly-new, bright yellow Challenger look like nothing more than a kid's go-cart, and it habitually makes mincemeat out of Dobro's sexy little Mustang. "Because Bo's going to be driving her."

Well now. That's an unexpected development for every one of them sitting here in front of the Hazzard Garage – except, of course, the older Duke boy. Bo manages to keep his reaction down to a simple turned head and raised eyebrow. At least he thinks he does; old Luke there always swears Bo's face is easier to read than most books. But he doesn't reckon anyone pays the blonde kid sitting on the passenger door frame a whole lot of mind right now, as the shock wave goes through the rest of the guys.

"Bo?" tries to be incredulity on Dobro's part, but it's just smug. It's you-ain't-_really_-gonna-let-your-kid-cousin-drive contained in a single syllable that gets laughed out, same way it used to be when Luke brought him along on pick-up games of football. The perils of his cousin growing up too fast, making friends with boys older than them both, and Bo always gets underestimated by them all.

"Yeah," Luke answers back, casual as you please, before tipping his can up and swallowing the last of that too-sweet cola. "And you ain't gonna be able to catch him for nothing," gets followed by a shrug.

Brody snickers; man loves watching Dobro get worked up. Or maybe he also finds it funny that there's going to be a high school kid mixed into their oh-so-adult activities.

Doesn't matter – Luke's over there pulling keys out of his pocket, then tossing them over the roof of the car to him, which makes its own point about how well his driving skills are trusted. Not a one of these boys here has ever been allowed behind the wheel of his cousin's prized possession.

"Don't get me wrong," Dobro chatters on with a smirk. "It's just that I was looking forward to kicking your tail at the Cataluchee Bridge." One-lane, covered, which usually reduces a half-mile section of the course to a game of chicken.

"Well then," Luke says, crushing his empty can with his right hand before tossing it into the trash barrel by the curb, and sometimes the man's just a danged showoff. Or he just takes this kind of thing too far, shoving against Dobro's competitive spirit this close to the start of the race. "You ain't gonna be disappointed none, because I'm gonna drive Cooter's Barracuda."

"Huh?" And there's the man himself, finally, emerging from a solid half-day's work. Mildly dazed from all of about five hours spent under one car or another, and he's just lucky to be the only mechanic in town, or his slothful ways would work against him. "Say what?"

"I need to borrow your car," Luke explains, patting their friend on the cheek like it'll wake him up. Which might not be the wisest thing. "The green one." A moment creeps by as the mechanic's brains shuffle slowly toward actually thinking. About what had been, up until a couple of months ago when he bought the Challenger, the man's baby: the sexy little Plymouth Barracuda that still takes up a prime parking spot in front of the garage, not to mention its place in Cooter's heart. Not that Luke bothers to recognize that their friend hasn't consented to anything; the fluid movement of his athletic body as he crosses the cracked pavement toward the car in question goes to prove that fact.

"Keys are in the ignition," seems to be Cooter giving in to the inevitable, gets met by a twinkle-eyed grin that reminds them all that it's the Barracuda's steering column that just got saved by those few words. Not a one of the boys here needs keys to start a car.

"Yahoo!" Dobro hollers as the rough equivalent to 'gentlemen start your engines,' while the rest of the guys scramble towards their various rides for the night.

The start isn't clean, considering that they lack a flag or starting pistol, but it doesn't much matter. Until blacktop runs to dirt they have to pay some semblance of attention to traffic laws anyway; it's only when they're enveloped by the shadows of the tree-canopy overhang with nothing but red clay under their wheels that there's an utter lack of rules.

Easy to tell, out here amongst the coons and possum, which of the drivers has a habit of running a car for a living, and who does it strictly for fun. Brody's got a heavy-handed, menacing style in his black Camaro, and Dobro likes the way his Mustang kicks up the dirt. Cooter may know the guts of each and every one of these cars from topside to bottom, might even have selected his Challenger based on the ability to scavenge parts from his own Barracuda should anything start to break down. But none of them, for all their talents or moxie, has the skill to drive blacked out like he and Luke do. No need for headlights to know exactly where the road bends, no reason to give away their position or choice of route to their opponents. It's a free-for-all, mad scramble to the grapevine, with Cooter currently in the lead; bright yellow, perfectly painted, not-a-ding-in-it, muscle car, and its owner cackling over the CB about how the rest of the pack can just eat his dust.

Bo reckons there's a reason Luke tidily handed his car over to him, and that it's got something to do with getting him to shut up about driving on moonshine runs, where most nights he begs for a chance behind the wheel. He gets sour faces for his efforts, followed by reminders of how he's supposed to be looking for the gleam of moonlight off the fender of another car – lawman or another runner, because they're equally dangerous – and not whining about how he could drive faster or better. This right here is undoubtedly a test, one he might even be meant to fail, but he's got no plans on doing anything other than winning the race.

Until he doesn't like the feel of the air around him, whistling by his ear too close and tight, clinging like sweat, smelling of danger, and it's not right. Could be that there's a glimmer of light where there shouldn't be, a hum where there ought only be silence, but if either of those is the case, he's unaware of them. What he knows is his own gut, clenching as his right hand takes a firm grip on the hard steering wheel of Luke's old car, the sweat of his palm and the bump of the tires as he pulls right, out of the openness of the road in front of him and into the brush. Screech of branch against car, and he fully expects he'll be spending some part of tomorrow compounding the scratches out of the navy blue skin of this car.

"Good instincts, Bo," comes mumbling over the C.B. in Luke's low voice at the same moment that the road he just spun off of comes alive with light. Red, white and blue, could be the fourth of July, except for the fact that it's January.

"All right, Cooter Davenport." It's Rosco Coltrane, from the sound of that voice twittering with glee through a bullhorn. Squeal of brakes, clank and rattle of cars skittering off into a ditch, choking dust in the air that starts glowing with even more spinning lights. Dobro and Brody, bumbling their way into the mess with sideways skids. Deputies, and it seems like the Hazzard law has either gotten lucky or smart; they've managed to be along the Ridge Road at exactly the time when the weekly race passes through. "Just you boys pull over to the side of the road." Which, near as Bo can tell, is a pointless order. Seems like the side of the road snuck right up and swallowed the whole mess of them.

"Stay put," Luke warns over the C.B. Makes Bo wonder where he is, into which direction he went off course, but it turns out not to matter. "I'm coming to you."

Arguments start out there on the road; too far away for him to follow, but he reckons he can guess that there's a certain amount of innocence being proclaimed, followed by orders to produce licenses and registrations.

He wants to ask Luke where he is, what the plan is, and how, exactly, they're going to fix this mess; he wants to get out there and somehow protect his friends because no Duke can sit idly by and let the law arrest anyone they care about. But even so much as opening the door of the car, crunching it into the branches that surround him, could give away his location. So he slides quietly up onto the doorframe instead, trying to get high enough which to view the proceedings over the branches that surround him. Concentrating on keeping quiet, not to mention staying out of the light that flashes into his eyes with each lazy loop of a bulb in a cruiser's light bar, he gets surprised by Luke's hand on his back. Woodsman's skills at their best; his cousin has managed to sneak up on him without making a sound. Bo manages not to holler in shock, but gets smirked at for jumping anyway.

"Slide back in there." Luke's whisper, familiar as his own breath, lets his heart settle back to a steady beat from where it was jumping around his chest like a nervous rabbit. "And get my bow out of the back seat." Makes it possible to do as he's told, to enjoy what's coming. Luke quietly popping his own trunk open, digging around, then carefully closing it before making his way back to meet Bo at the driver's window. He takes the bow, then offers his free arm as support, letting Bo slip out the window and silently to the ground. They make their quiet way to a slightly more open area, where they can clearly see the entirety of the police activity. Sheriff Coltrane presides over the proceedings like the director of the school play, pointing here and there to indicate where he wants each person to stand. Two deputies idly watch as another two go about patting down the Dukes' friends as though they actually expect to find hidden weapons in the middle of a back road race. For all of a second he's angry that the law of this county always assumes the worst of those that live outside of the four-block radius neatly maintained houses in town, and then he hears the hiss of flame to his right. Turns to watch Luke touch match to wick then draw his arm back, and smiles at the realization that the cops are not entirely wrong about country boys – sometimes they do carry weapons, even if they're not the traditional sort. Fireworks taped to an arrow nocked into a bow, and fired well over everyone's heads to land quite safely in the middle of nowhere. His head ducks and Luke's arms comes around him to shield them both against clumps of dirt and small stones as ground heaves under the explosion.

"Bye, Rosco," he hears Cooter call to the prone sheriff as stock car engines start over on the edge of the road, and dust kicks up to join the rest of the debris in the air. Another close call, and the law really ought to learn not to mess with racers.


	3. Part One, Chapter Two

**Chapter Two**

_February 1971_

"Watch that—"

The warning comes from nowhere, and not only that, too late.

"—root." Because the plow blade's already caught, hooked good, and for once the young mule at the front end of this little chain of disaster is showing no interest in halting.

"Dang it, Maudine, whoa," has no impact whatsoever on the mule's plans to keep on dragging until the plow flips or the brace catches Luke on the chin and knocks him silly. Takes a quick hand to unhitch the plow, then hurdle it and catch hold of the harness with his bare hand. Seems like he might just get himself a free and unwanted ride around the south forty on his boot heels, until that voice comes again.

"Maudine," is all it says, and the feisty mule finally stops.

"Much obliged," he mumbles, though he reckons he could be more grateful than he actually is. At the moment he's closer to annoyed than appreciative. "Come on, girl," he urges the mule, doing a fine imitation of a man in charge of the situation. But if there's one thing he's learned over the course of his years here on the farm, it's that mules do precisely what they feel like doing at any given time, regardless of how well they're supposed to know their commands.

"Luke," Jesse scolds, now that he's chosen to come over to where man and mule are duking it out with no obvious winners. He doesn't suppose it ought to be surprising that it's him that's about to get an earful when Maudine's the stubborn one, but it's frustrating all the same. "The ground ain't much past frozen."

Which is an exaggeration. The winter's been mild since that cold snap back around the New Year, and there's no reason to think that a stiff and frigid wind will suddenly descend from the north now.

But at least the old man proves helpful, taking hold of Maudine by the halter, and looking her straight in the eye. A tsk at her, as if it's possible to shame a mule, then the growled lecturing starts back up where it left off. At Luke, of course, not the varmint.

"Maudine here ain't never plowed before March. Why, she ain't prepared for such a thing."

And that isn't a hundred percent accurate. She's got new shoes on her feet, she's had oats and barley on top of her usual grazing diet, and just this morning Luke took his life (or a least the health of his lungs) in his hands by rubbing her down with liniment, same powerful smelling concoction as Jesse always uses before putting her to work. Of course, that's not the tale those soulful mule eyes are telling the old man. Must've learned some of the finer arts of femininity from Daisy, about how men are suckers for sad faces.

"March is only a week away," Luke reminds both man and beast. Dismissive wave of his hand, because neither of them are paying him one bit of mind. Someone's got to retrieve the plow, so he walks off muttering, "Besides, you're the one who's always saying how if we planted earlier we'd have fewer pests…"

Not quite as far under his breath as he means to, apparently.

"Boy," Jesse calls to him in his best don't-you-sass-me voice. Nothing to do but turn and face the man. "If you're that bored that you got to go plowing frozen ground, well, you can just get around to putting chicken wire around the dog pen like you and Bo promised to do before Christmas."

Dukes have rules about not lying, but there's no clause in there about exaggeration or denial, and his uncle is fully invoking his right to use both.

Boredom's got nothing to do with why Luke's got a souvenir splinter in the soft skin of his palm and a charley-horse in the muscle his left thigh from battling Maudine. But it would be a cruelty to point out – again – that there's every possibility that the eighteen-year-old won't be here to help out later in the season, especially when the old man's working so hard at forgetting there's anything like a war, anyplace other than Hazzard that his oldest boy could be compelled to be. It's that same overlooking of facts that are really fairly undeniable that has the man still refusing to let Bo start driving on deliveries despite the way his cousin keeps proving himself to be plenty talented behind the wheel.

Anyway, it's that whole _before Christmas_ thing that really rankles under his skin. He can't swear about the exact date when he and his cousin made that fine promise about fixing up the dog pen so they can get themselves a female for breeding (and keep the randy boys they've already got from knocking her up at will), but he'd swear it couldn't be more than a couple of weeks back.

All the same, arguing the details now might not be the wisest course of action, not when his uncle is over there tutting about the great disservice done to the family mule and how he can't even go off to town for a few hours without worrying over what his kids are getting up to, all while studiously ignoring how his boy is struggling to right the plow. So Luke sighs and resigns himself to a day of tedious labor in the barn.

* * *

Quiet click of tongue sucking away from teeth, firm grip of fingers along his jawline causing more pain than whatever the damage to his cheek might be. Luke's version of gentleness, and it's likely to leave marks in its wake.

"There'd better be a good story behind that," his cousin warns. "Or Jesse'll give you bruises on your backside to match." Which means that what's on his face is more than a little bit noticeable, but that's fine, really. He reckons his story is better than any Luke ever brought home as an accompaniment to his torn shirts and black eyes, what with how there's a damsel in distress at the center of it. Or maybe she's just a girl whose fresh face looked not yet ripe for the picking, who was having a hard time getting Matt Caldwell to let go of her arm. Someone weaker than Bo, just begging to be defended, and it seemed like a good cause. Right up until she started hollering at him for bloodying her boyfriend's nose and he realized he didn't really know her all that well.

"What's the other guy look like?" Luke asks, tight grip of fingers turning his chin so he can get a look at the other side of Bo's face. Must not look like much because the hand finally comes off his jaw.

"_Guys_," Bo corrects, and that earns him an assessing eyebrow. Trying to judge just how much tall tale has gotten mixed into his truth, and Bo just shrugs. He's not going to worry about how deep Luke's belief in his story runs, not when his knuckles hurt even worse than his face, not to mention the headache he's going to wind up with when Daisy sees the damage to his shirt and takes after him with the frying pan. "I bloodied Matt Caldwell's nose before his brother got involved." Would have been more of them, could have turned into an all-out, purposeless brawl if the guys standing in the circle around them had gotten a chance to join in. But they got pulled apart by Mr. Armstrong, the reasonably sympathetic science teacher, and told to get off school property before he hauled the whole bunch of them into the office. "I reckon he looks worse than me."

Which earns him a snort. "Why ain't you joined the basketball team, Bo?"

Crazy question coming out of nowhere, same as the bag of ice that gets shoved without warning into his face. Luke's method of caring for him always has left a little to be desired, but then again, it's easier to take his oldest cousin's rough protectiveness than it is to tolerate Daisy's attentive worry or Jesse's grumbled fretting. He was lucky to have tromped up the creaking steps of the old farmhouse to find only Luke in the kitchen.

Though this concern about the basketball team sounds awfully paternal. He snatches the ice out of his cousin's hand to give it a good once-over. No sharp edges after all, funny how it hurt when Luke pressed it against his cheek. The damage there must be worse than he knows, and as soon as he can get his cousin to let up on fussing over him, he needs to get a good look at himself in the mirror. He presses the ice against the heat of his cheek again as a form of self-preservation; if he doesn't do it, Luke will. With all the tenderness of a car slamming into a guardrail.

"You was always the one liked basketball," he corrects. Football, baseball, Luke played all the sports and – just ask Coach Hall – was the star of every team. Powerful, quick, agile, strong; the way his cousin's slapping the refilled ice trays into the freezer goes to prove that last one.

"You liked it just fine," he gets reminded, and it's true. When they were kids, and pick-up games included boys a lot older than him, when it wasn't anything serious and they laughed as hard as they played, when Cooter Davenport would lift him up by the waist so he could dunk the ball into the playground hoop, he'd liked it.

"Besides," he adds, "I ain't thinking I'll stay in school a lot longer." He drops that in as casually as if it's the continuation of their discussion of sports, even if his heart does bounce up to his ears and throb around noisily. "So there ain't no point in me getting involved in nothing." Yeah, he expects to get yelled at, to get lectured and questioned and – he also knows that Luke is the key to convincing Jesse. He's got to take the plunge sometime. "I'm sixteen, you know."

He isn't prepared to get snickered at, to get a twisted smirk that doesn't take him seriously. "What do you reckon to do with yourself all day if you ain't in school?" The freezer door slams shut to punctuate the question.

"I don't know," he snaps back. "What do you do all day?"

Oh, his cousin doesn't like that question, not one bit. Lips pressing together and curling down at the corner, hands on his hips as he stands there, giving off his best squint-eyed look. Luke doesn't want to answer, or maybe he's trying to come up with one of those wise-sounding explanations of exactly how important school is. As though he could really make a convincing case about how it's more critical for Bo to spend his days figuring out what x equals than it is to fish or hunt, regardless of the family's need have some meat to go with their rice.

Luke probably figures that if he's not in school between eight and three, then Bo won't have anything better to do than get to scuffling with the likes of Matt Caldwell. His oldest cousin's supposed to be the smart one, but his logic doesn't extend as far as working out that his kid cousin would have no cause to be rolling around in the dirt and weeds of the schoolyard at all, protecting the virtue of a girl who doesn't want his help, so long as he could drop out of school.

"I _work_, Bo." Well, that's convincing, what with how this afternoon featured his cousin just hanging out in the kitchen, waiting for him to get home from school. "Besides, you go telling Jesse how you want to quit school and he ain't never going to let you drive on a 'shine run."

"He ain't never going to let me drive on a run anyway," Bo laments. "I can't see where spending my days reading about World War I and," sour face at even the thought, "analyzing poetry is going to change his mind about that."

That makes Luke laugh outright, makes him sit down in the next chair and grab onto Bo's hand, pulling the ice away from his face for another look at that damage. A quick pat to the tender skin there, some kind of an attempt at reassuring them both that Bo's going to be all right.

"You don't settle down, cuz, and start convincing Jesse that you're growing up?" Blue eyes looking straight into his, reminding him that whatever comes, Luke's on his side. "You quit school now? And he's going to have you up there at the still with him every night. Cooking. You ain't never going to get to do nothing you want to, because your whole life is going to be about ratios of sugar to corn to water." Great, it'll be math class all over again. "What you want to do is to go to school, stay out of trouble, and make sure your grades are good enough that he don't figure he needs to spend all day and night keeping an eye on you."

He huffs out all the air in his lungs, what he had been holding there in some sort of defense against getting yelled at or called a fool. He could have responded if only Luke had gotten mad at him, but this logic – he has no good answer for it.

"Poetry," Luke advises. "Just pretend its music. Set it to a beat and it ain't so bad." His cousin gets up from the table, heading for the door and afternoon chores. Bo reckons he ought to follow him, even if Luke would never ask him to help on a day when he's been in a fight. "And Bo," gets added, just as his cousin's about to step out the door. "Join the basketball team," his bossy cousin commands.

And walks out after he hears Bo's snort of a response.

* * *

Spinning, too fast, lights behind and then suddenly in front. Smell of burnt rubber, sound of sirens, and he'll take his chances against Rosco Coltrane any day. If all else fails, a good game of head-on chicken will force what had been the pursuing sheriff off the road. It's a better option than what he pulled a bootlegger's turn to escape: Harvey Essex's roadblock, complete with armed agents taking positions in the beds of the two pickups on the far side of the sandbags. This here road suddenly resembles Friday night rush in downtown Atlanta a heck of a lot more than the sleepy back roads of Hazzard.

"Luke," comes at him from the passenger seat, a warning. There's another patrol car behind the Sheriff's, but none of the county's deputies have the guts to keep coming at a moonshine runner, not when the latter are known to be wild-driving desperados. "Left," gets suggested to him at high volume, and he reckons it's good advice. Swinging from one side of the road in front of them to the other, like the ball in a pinball machine. Fenders smack together as cars fishtail, leaving nothing worse than a dent in their wake, while the Duke boys make their way upstream through a river of patrol cars and back into the welcoming darkness. They won't be cloaked this way for long; the law behind them is already maneuvering around in an uncoordinated series of K-turns that bangs them into each other a few more times, then the pursuit resumes.

"We ain't never going to make it to the Millstead Crossing Bridge," Bo informs him, "not with all them smokeys between here and there."

"No kidding," he mumbles back, but the whining of the car's engine swallows his words. Just as well, he's got better things to do than smooth over his cousin's feathers, ruffled by sarcasm. "We ain't gonna try," he says, louder this time.

The swamp, that's where they need to get to, and they've got some tricky miles to cross between here and there. At least now, as far as he knows, all of their enemies are at their back. Sadly, so is any help they might have called in, which leaves it down to a simple matter of outrunning the hounds.

"Come on, Luke," Bo encourages or complains, hard to tell the difference. Not that it matters. Aerodynamics – and Bo wants to quit school and miss out on the science lessons that would teach him this – is not on their side. Not when their back end is weighted down by thick ceramic jugs filled with liquid, not when the cars behind them have powerful engines and light loads. "Come on, Tilly," goes to show that the boy may not know the mathematical formulas behind exactly why, but he does know that the outcome has as much to do with car as driver.

Too dangerous to dump their contraband here, where it might survive the fall into the soft dirt and make for fine evidence against the two fleeing Duke boys. Nothing to do but drive – faster and better than the men behind them – down old lanes, thick with trees on either side. If it were summer there'd be miles of kudzu vine blanketing this part of the world, offering them a veil to disappear through and hide behind, but for now the landscape is still winter-barren, dead and unwelcoming. Nothing to do but run.

"Cuz," Bo calls, excited tone, "there." He's pointing to a gap, as familiar to the two of them as the entrance to their own driveway. Not exactly meant for a car; at the end of the little trail Bo's indicating lies a secluded swimming hole, perfect for skinny-dipping. It's a place in which he's spent many a teenaged hour, with female company or just a few of the guys, and about the biggest thing any of them has taken down that old footpath is a dirt bike. They'd be fools to try to drive down it now, and the law would be morons to follow after them.

But Dukes have never been particularly famous for their smarts, and it takes the combined intelligence of all members of the law of Hazzard to fill out a single parking ticket, so most of the parade finds itself bumping over roots and stones on a path cut by kids looking for a place to swim.

Still, Luke's got the advantage here. Being one of the boys that helped to make this little walkway, he knows where it's wide and narrow, has an instinct for the curvature as it hooks around streambeds and boulders. Cars behind them begin to drop out until it's just the Dukes and a pair of cruisers, most likely belonging to Sheriff Rosco Coltrane and whichever of his lackeys has been lucky enough to last this long. They're both a touch timid back there; could be a by-product of having heard a few crunches, bangs and pops of metal on wood. Whatever the cause, Luke's not looking a gift horse in the mouth.

"There," Bo says again, proving that the Duke cousins are on the same wavelength tonight. As dim a wavelength as it might be, nowhere near the bright end of the spectrum, they'll take what they can get. What's in their trunk is enough to get them sent to prison for about five years. (Which might just solve a number of problems for them both, but it would create a whole heck of a lot more for their kin.) They've been fool enough to bring it this far; there's no turning back now, not with the trees that close in on either side of them.

Besides, this little side path here, hardly wider than a deer crossing, has its advantages. Taken far enough, it leads to private property belonging to the Duncans. Not quite as safe as the swamp, not when Rosco will likely follow them there, at least until Zeke Duncan starts firing his shotgun and suggesting that the law best either move along or produce a warrant.

But Luke doesn't take them that far. Before they reach the fence line, there's a stand of spruce, grown thick with neglect. It's going to scrape the hell out of Tilly's paint, but he drives into the thick of it, nestling the car in the branches, then cuts the motor.

He and Bo hold their collective breath, listening. Car engines whine and change pitch as they pass and the silence in Tilly crumbles into giggles and quiet whistles of relief. But the chase is not done; though engines shudder and die, apparently the search doesn't. On foot now, waving flashlights and hollering to one another, the men continue their efforts. Must have gotten a little too close, like a coyote on a rabbit's scent, and the law can just about taste its victory.

There's a certain amount of wisdom in staying where they are, playing dead to the hunters out there. Odds are really against a flashlight's beam striking just the right angle to catch a reflective surface on a black car that's jammed into the dense branches spreading across the gaps between spruce trees. But staying motionless leaves them in obvious proximity to the illegal substance in their trunk, not to mention that the Duke boys are notoriously lousy at sitting still. If they can get out of here and the contraband gets found anyway, they can always report Tilly as stolen after the fact, and Harvey Essex will let Jesse negotiate him down to a fine. Five-hundred dollars isn't anything they can spare, but it's better than the alternative. He nods his head at Bo, whose eyes are just begging him for permission to run.

They can't open the doors – as far as they can tell, the law is still some distance from them, but squealing hinges, not to mention the thud of a car door latching, no matter how quietly, could give them away. So they each pull themselves up into the open frames of Tilly's windows and look down to find dried leaves on the ground beneath them.

Aunt Lavinia – there are some brown-edged, half crumbled photos of her as a slip of a girl no heavier than a dandelion seed, long black hair plaited over each ear with the tied ends falling close to her hips – was a child of the mountains that learned how to move silently over any natural surface, whether is was solid as stone or loose as grains of sand. By the time she found herself raising other women's orphaned children, her graying hair got knotted at the nape of her neck, and her belly had rounded considerably. But she could still move over the ground without cracking a twig or crushing an acorn. And she'd taught the children in her care similar skills.

Which makes it easy enough to get out of the car, even if the branches of the spruce hug tightly to them and the ground below is covered in the thin layer of noisy leaves. The hard part is deciding what to do next.

Bo's pulse thrums there under his fingers when Luke grabs his wrist; the boy's nerves are on edge, and maybe Jesse's got a point about the boy's relative youth. Got to stay calm and composed to outsmart the enemy, so Luke takes a minute to run his hand up to his younger cousin's shoulder and give a reassuring squeeze there before taking hold of his hand again and breaking into a quiet, scuttling sort of a run. It's not more than a minute, maybe two, before they find the fence line around the Duncan property and, holding the barbed wire down with one hand, hop over.

They're safe here, but, "What about Tilly?" Bo whispers at him, between heaving breaths. Boy was made to drive, not run.

"With any luck, we'll be able to pick her up tomorrow." But luck is not enough, and Bo's incredulous little vocalization drives that point home to him. "Come on," he encourages in a hiss of a whisper, clutching onto Bo's arm again.

Another short run to the stables, nestled in the tree line about a football field's distance from the house. Once they're inside, just them and the horses, they can speak above a murmur. All the same, "I got a plan," is all he tells his cousin. Seems to be enough, anyway.

"Ain't Zeke gonna mind us borrowing old Starlight there?" Bo asks when he catches a drift of what Luke's up to, leading the aptly-named bay filly out of her stable. Born by starlight, and she's going to run by starlight tonight, carrying two Dukes. Barebacked, because they don't have time to properly saddle up.

"It's for a good cause." The kind the law-wary Duncan patriarch can get behind. Besides, they'll brush and feed her, then deliver her home with a complimentary gallon jug of Jesse's finest, and the man will forget all about this little bit of horse rustling the minute he takes the first sip.

Luke mounts and pulls his cousin up behind him before nudging the horse underneath them into a trot, then a canter. Around the fence line, then back into the woods; Starlight's hooves aren't half as quiet as the Duke boys' feet were a few minutes back, but that hardly matters, what with how he elbows Bo's ribs the minute his eye catches a flashlight beam in the distance.

"Yee-haw!" Bo hollers, followed by a giggle. Luke can second that emotion, watching flashlight beams try to come to bear on them from too far away, seeing how one of those flashlights seems to drop low.

"Wijit!" and the crunch of leaves seems to confirm that one Rosco Coltrane has tripped over a protruding root, a rounded stone, or maybe just his own two feet. No time to wait around for the man to get himself upright again, or offer a hand like the polite boys they were raised to be. In seconds, a minute at most, those boys in blue out there will pile into squad cars and take up the chase again. The Dukes have got to take advantage of what little they have: the dark, a head start, country smarts. They turn Starlight around and coax her to a gallop toward the road, away from where Tilly is still hiding in the trees.

It's a crazy chase, especially when they pick up the revenuer's entourage along the roadside, where the feds waited patiently for the boys to be flushed out. But eventually their wild dash takes them up yet another dirt trail where no car can follow, until they crest Rattlesnake Ridge. From up here they can watch the cars below them circle and hear the epithets getting yelled from one open window to the next, blame for the failed bust getting passed from Hazzard law to Federal Agent and back.

Aunt Lavinia was part Cherokee on her mother's side. She had her notions like no one else Luke had ever known and strung together thoughts that were just – it wasn't right to call your aunt, your substitute mother, nuts. But she said things and as wild as they were, no one could refute them. They were crazy and true at the same time. Things about wildlife and weather and…

She always believed that Luke got Bo's heart, and Bo got Luke's. Jesse had scoffed, but Lavinia stood pat. Pointed out that Luke almost never cried except when Bo was hurting, said that if there was half a chance of Luke smiling it was only because Bo was happy. And that Bo looked to Luke before doing anything, as if he was consulting a compass. Looked at Luke like he was looking into his own soul. Somehow their hearts had been switched. She figured it was after their parents died, on their way to the spirit world. They must have known, she told Jesse, how hard it would be for each of their boys to be alone in the world. So they'd stopped on their way to the next life and put each boy's heart in the other's body, just to make sure they'd always have each other.

As the adrenalin drains from the systems of two overly excited Duke boys, and they emerge from some sort of spirit world all their own, Luke feels two hearts beating, his and Bo's, and can't tell the difference. Maybe they do have each other's hearts, or maybe they share two parts of the same heart. Maybe Lavinia was right.

Or maybe he's overwrought, maybe the last half hour has taken away his sense along with his strength as the blood stops rushing around his body, leaving him limp. Maybe it's the way Bo's breastbone is pressed against his spine as the two of them share the same horse's back.

And maybe they need to get home, to safety, to rest, to family that will tut over their night's adventures and help them return to rescue the car they left behind.

"Let's go," he mumbles, nudging Starlight into a slow amble. He feels the tired nod of a tousled blonde head against his shoulder.

* * *

Dropping out of school still rings as the best idea he's had in a year, especially right now when he's creatively dodging the curiosity directed at him. It appears that word of his and Luke's exploits over the weekend have already made the rounds of his classmates in the few minutes that they all stand outside and wait for the school's doors to open. He reckons Bill Duncan's the source, what with how Starlight had to get delivered back to her home at first light, apologies and explanations had to be made. And if old Zeke bore them no ill will, other than to snicker at their misfortunes so similar to his own, he must've forgotten to tell his kids about keeping quiet what no revenuer or lawman ever needed to overhear.

"Where'd they get you?"

At least the blank look he offers to Lawson is honest. He's bound by conflicting rules, the kind that Jesse wades through without ever noticing that they clash, and Luke twists and turns his way around like a sidewinder. Don't lie, but whatever you do, don't tell the truth.

"I heard you got shot." Which goes to show that the Hazzard rumor mill is in top form. "But you don't look too bad off." Lawson seems disappointed at the lack of blood.

"I ain't never been shot," is another bit of honesty, and so far he's been able to live up to Jesse's expectations, but he'd breathe a lot easier if he could be standing shoulder to shoulder with Luke right now. His cousin's just about the best not-quite-liar in the county, maybe the state.

Daisy's up on the concrete steps, just outside the door as if she's actually eager to spend her day in a classroom. She's in a ring of girls, surrounded by a second ring of boys, but her warm smile stands out just the same, and if she's answering any uncomfortable questions up there, it doesn't show on her face.

The girl gets underestimated all the time; heck all Dukes do, the whole county does, sometimes. By revenuers, by passers-through who use words like 'hicks' and 'rubes,' and figure that if you've grown up with dirt under your nails it's only because you're too dumb to wash it out, and that if you've ever sampled moonshine, your brains must be pickled.

But his female cousin, she's had it worse than any of them, assumptions about her abilities lowballed even by her own kin. Or, well, that's not entirely fair, because he understands their Uncle's desire to protect her, which has been thoroughly instilled in Luke as well. Heck, Bo halfway has it, too, watching her up there on the steps, with that oversized senior, Ernie Ledbetter suddenly standing too close. Luke's age to the day old Ernie is, but without half the brains. Or maybe just lacking an Aunt Lavinia to get him into school early, so he's always been a year behind the oldest Duke cousin and carries a grudge about that. Up there now looming over sweet Daisy, and harming her might just be the best way to exact some revenge on Luke, but Bo's not about to let it happen. Then again, before he can even fully turn his attentions toward the activity up there, Daisy's already shoved the goon back, and is engaged in giving him a piece of her mind. The kids around her laugh, one of the boys socks Ernie on the shoulder, and it's over before it could even get started.

Daisy needs a lot less protecting than she gets, has no particular reason to be shielded from much of anything, and she and Bo might be the only ones who know it. He can see the frustration when she gets held back from some of the less legal aspects of the Dukes' existence, can relate to the feeling. There are things her family wants to keep her from becoming (and this is why Luke needs to stop seeing that girl, Summer – because she represents the road they all fear Daisy going down, even if their cousin is nothing like the drifting girl that the older Duke boy spends time with) and a ward of the legal system is one of them. They have rules about never letting the girl get anywhere in proximity to the amount of moonshine it would take to get her sent to prison, which means she'll never get to cook up at the stills, nor deliver out on the road. Relegated to running interference, and Bo can understand her occasional exasperation.

But right about now, he'd trade places with her in a heartbeat to be up there on the steps holding court with the other members of the hospitality committee, the yearbook staff, the drama club, and all the other extracurricular activities she involves herself in. If she's avoiding explaining a moonshine run gone haywire, there's no way to tell that from here.

"I heard you and Luke outran all three tri-county sheriffs, their deputies, the state police and the feds, but you got shot," Lawson complains. And it seems to be ruining the boy's whole morning that Bo's got no holes in him anywhere obvious, isn't bleeding or limping or missing any important body parts.

But Lawson's just a bored schoolkid like himself, looking for an interesting start to his day. So—

"Hey, you got your mitt?" Bo asks him. Because there are better ways they could spend these few minutes.

Lawson drops his books, and pulls the worn leather out from between his science and math texts. "Helps to break it in," he explains. Bo's mitt's back home and already got broken in by Luke before him, but that's fine. He and Lawson only need one mitt and one ball between them to practice their pitching skills.

Because he's going to stay in school, according to Luke's advice and despite his fonder wishes, and about the only thing that's going to make it tolerable is next week's tryouts for the varsity baseball team.


	4. Part One, Chapter Three

_**Author's Note: **Happy New Year, all! Now that the holidays are done I should be a bit more reliable out here, both reading and posting. _

_Thanks to those who read what I post, and I'm always particularly thrilled to hear from y'all! I'll hush up now, because these chapters are loooong enough without my lead in blabbering._

**

* * *

**

**Chapter Three  
**

_March 1971_

There's a wild exuberance, not entirely sane and not even slightly mature, with which Bo attacks the world. Punctuated by a sunshine-silly grin, the kind of irresistible attitude that stops cold anything vaguely resembling a reprimand. Good natured, all in fun, no harm meant to anyone.

Just try telling that to the fish.

Then again, maybe it's his fault for bringing the ball of energy out first thing after Saturday morning chores and family breakfast, to a place where success relies upon silence. Especially when the boy has spent eight hours a day from Monday to Friday sitting still through classes that he hates.

"You got him, Luke, you got him!" Glee bubbling over, and a bit prematurely, too. All Luke's got is a line that's drifting downstream in the Chattahoochee River, dead weight caught on his hook. "Come on!" Encouragement, but it's not enough. The boy drops his own weightless fishing pole, reaches out like he's going to grab onto the bend in Luke's.

"Bo," he growls before things can get that far. The last thing they need is four hands on one thin rod, yanking against the tension there and threatening to snap the metal in half.

"Right," his cousin answers, good sense taking over where impulsivity leaves off. Or not.

Bo's hands find the taut fishing line instead, feet marching into the water without concern for how much he's splashing, without thought about how it's barely spring and the water's got to be mostly made up of scarcely melted snow. Moving along pretty well, too, like it does this time of year, burbling over stones, aiding and abetting whatever's on his hook in its progress downstream.

"Bo," he tries again, because the pull on his rod is too steady, not the yank and tug of a good fight. There are ways the boy could help him, and he's pretty sure that chasing through the water isn't the best one. An old shoe, a branch, some detritus from a picnic basket full of hope for a young couple – whatever's on the end of his line, he doesn't reckon it's worth snapping his old pole and—

Jump and splash, and flotsam has never done that, not in all his life of fishing.

"Wow! He's big!" comes out of Bo, followed by more words that get lost in the splatter of the chase, because the boy is in love.

And since what's on the other end of the line is worth catching, Luke starts to reel in earnest. Feels the drag and lug, the zigzag motion, but he can't see much of anything for all the droplets and foam, not to mention the width of his cousin between him and his quarry.

There's a sudden release that makes him stumble back half a step, and then there's his cousin, knee deep in the water, turning toward him and holding up a still wriggling catfish, front of his shirt clinging tight to his skin and dark with water, his bangs dripping into his eyes. Boy must've halfway dived for Luke's prize, but his grin shows no concern for the ridiculousness of his current situation. He just marches himself back toward the bank to hand over tonight's dinner for unhooking and storage in their bucket. Stays there, water rushing by his ankles, until he gets looked at again, followed by a smirk.

"Come on," the fool says before Luke can get around to pointing out what a mess he is. "Let's go swimming."

Makes him chuckle at the absurdity. "It ain't nowhere near warm enough, cuz."

Shrug. "I'm already wet," _and therefore you should be too_, is the sort of logic that can only make sense in that blonde brain of his cousin's. It's a fool's argument, reinforced by a silly grin surrounded by droplets running out of plastered-down curls.

Luke shakes his head at the ridiculousness, then sits down in the grass to remove his boots and shirt. At least, he thinks as he follows his moron of a cousin into the breath-stealing cold of snowmelt rushes, he'll have dry feet when they get to the far side of this particular patch of foolishness.

Today isn't really about fishing anyway, or it doesn't have to be. It's more of a chance to reward his cousin for making it through another week of school when he hates it so much, it's about days growing longer while time together grows short, it's about wasting hours with the boy his cousin will outgrow being – someday. And he reckons he might miss some of that growing, but he doesn't have to miss a silly, spur-of-the-moment swim, not today.

Wrestling and dunking where the river runs deep and still, met with high pitched giggles and blustering threats, and when that gets old, Luke picks himself a flat boulder to stretch out on and invite the sun to warm and dry him. Bo stays in the water, swimming with a fluidity that Luke's never had, his farm-strengthened arms churning smoothly through the water and his slender body gliding behind. There might be any number of things that the older Duke could proclaim himself to be better at – including fishing, considering how it wouldn't have been his idea to go crashing into the water and scaring them all away – but when it comes to sinuous activities like driving and swimming, Bo's got grace and beauty that his cousin can't touch.

"Come on, Bo," he hollers when the sun starts to arc to the west, and the boy comes out, shaking himself off like a dog. "Don't make a mess in my car," he mumbles as they collect their gear and their lone catch. And since there's little chance that the Falcon's bench seat will be anything but a soggy mess anyway, he gestures Bo toward the driver's seat and gives him no particular direction in which to drive.

A couple of windblown hours later, they pull into the dark farmyard with their clothes and hair air dried into a ragged mess, Bo barefoot while his soggy boots sit on the floorboards of Luke's back seat. Every bit the epitome of the country boys that they were raised to be as they stumble, with their single fish, into the kitchen. Daisy's nose wrinkles, and Jesse's finger points Bo off to the shower and directs Luke back toward the porch to clean and bone the catfish out there.

He's just running his knife the length from head to tail when there are heavy footsteps on the splintered boards behind him.

"Luke," the old man says.

"Yeah?" he asks, but doesn't look up; he's a mite busy handling a sharp object right now.

"Son," comes at him again, sounds vaguely serious. Like a lecture in waiting, for being gone too long or for walking into the kitchen dirty enough to be Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer after a month on the run, and he reckons his full attention is required for that. So he turns his head, craning his neck to look up and over his own shoulder at the man who raised him.

He's getting handed an envelope. "Mail for you," Jesse informs him, in case he couldn't tell.

Thumb and forefinger only, he gingerly takes hold of it. His hands are filthy and it's too dingy out here to read much of anything right now, but this letter doesn't require opening anyway. He sets it on the stoop beside him and turns back to the project that just got interrupted.

Warmth on his shoulder, weight of an old man's hand. Part of him wants to shrug out from under it, and the rest of him would like nothing more than to take to his feet and run as far from here as he can. But neither gesture would do any good, so he sighs and pretends to give a damn about the catfish in his hands.

And all the while there's that envelope by his knee with the round seal up where the return address belongs. _Selective Service System_, it announces. Jesse pats his shoulder and leaves him to his own thoughts on the matter.

* * *

"Ah-ah, boy!" greets him before he's even fully into the kitchen. "You just turn back around and leave them shoes on the porch before you come in here."

His sneakers, covered in red clay from the infield dirt of the baseball field. Call it shortstop's syndrome, at least in Hazzard where the dirt has to be sprayed down before any game or it would get kicked up as dust and make the umpire's job next to impossible. "Yes sir," he calls; should have thought about getting his shoes off before he even opened the door.

But a win on the field always takes away his better judgment, and today's included a couple of neatly turned double plays by one Bo Duke.

"That's better," his uncle says when he enters again, this time in sock feet. "You have a good game?" The old man tosses him an apple, underhand. A snack for a starving boy because there are afternoon chores to be done and a crop line to be walked before dinner.

"Best one of the season," he manages to say before taking a huge bite out of the apple. "We won." These last words get him scowled at, not for their content but for the fact that he says them with a mouthful. But he's out of the kitchen and halfway to his bedroom before the scolding can start – if it even does. He's reasonably sure he can get away with dicey manners on an afternoon when he's celebrating a winning game and, as far as he can tell, his female cousin isn't even in the house. Seems like she's the key to proper etiquette, at least as pertains to minor infractions.

He makes quick work of the apple, taking huge bites as he changes out of the sweat pants that pass for a baseball uniform, and into jeans and an old t-shirt. Back into the kitchen to throw the core into the slop bucket for the goats and he's digging around for his boots when Jesse tells him he can skip most of the barn chores and head out to the crops.

"Luke done already took care of feeding the livestock for the day," their uncle informs him, peering over the top of the newspaper that he's reading at the kitchen table. Mug by his right hand and it's awfully late in the day for his uncle to be drinking coffee. But apparently that's what he's doing, so maybe he had a rough time sleeping last night. "Best you see to bedding them down, then head out to check the corn. Don't be dallying, neither; I reckon you still got homework to do." And dinner to eat, because that apple hardly made a dent in his hunger.

"Where is old Luke, anyways?"

His cousin's blue car sits under the old oak, still dusty from Sunday afternoon's romping around the grapevine, but the pickup's missing. Most likely means a supply run to town or maybe even Capitol City, and if he's really lucky, Luke will bring back a car magazine or two from the newsstand.

"He had to run down to Atlanta," Jesse says without dropping the newspaper down from where it covers most of his face. "I reckon he'll be late tonight, so you best get to work, because he ain't gonna be here to help you."

"Atlanta?" comes out as half a whine, because trips to the big city are few and far between, and always more fun if the Duke boys go on them together. "What's he doing there?" (_That couldn't wait until the weekend when I could go too? _But there's no way to say that last part without sounding like a disappointed brat.)

Paper comes down an inch then; dark blue eyes scolding him even before the words come. "He had some things to tend to," comes out in that high pitched voice that warns him not to ask follow-up questions. "Now you just get out there."

"Yes sir," he huffs. Because he has to do what his uncle says, but he doesn't have to like it.

* * *

The beer – though it stands ready to take the blame the same as it ever has and that's a loyalty not found in humans – is not at fault for the way he's stuck to the barstool, slowly nursing just one draft. Still a relatively long drive ahead, and it's the slow passage of time that's got him pinned here. The evening is shy in its approach, creeping into corners and testing them out for safety and security before daring to show itself in the open. Pink-tinged twilight but nothing spectacular, at least not as far as he can see from his vantage point behind the window of the Peachtree Pub. Doesn't matter, sunset could be fluorescent and he'd still be sitting precisely where he is, killing time while waiting for the darkness.

And beyond, because the sun going down is not enough. He needs quiet to descend over the land, to set the birds to tucking their heads under their wings while livestock settles and the lights switch off in one room and then another in the farmhouses that ring the region. And when he reckons that most of the world has gone into dormancy, he gets up off the barstool that's got to have the imprint of his backside on it by now, then into the family pickup to travel streets as familiar to him as the lines on his own hands. Trees loom on either side of the road, black goblins that reach out to grab at him as he passes, but turn to shadows before they can make their catch. Aside from the maples and oaks that dominate the landscape, no one pays him a lick of mind.

Which is precisely what he wanted; just seems strange to be hurtling toward home in the dark, unmolested. Of course, that's why he brought the pickup in the first place, because he figured that for once he'd like to drive over the back roads of his own county without the relentless pursuit of the law, who have become all the more dogged in their attempts to catch the Dukes over the past few months. Made perfect sense less than sixteen hours ago: a bit of privacy, just him and his thoughts for this drive, and there's no accounting for how he wishes for Tilly and a long string of patrol cars on his tail.

Clock's ticking death-quick toward midnight by the time he reaches his own driveway, killing the headlights before they can hit any of the darkened windows. No signs of life as the pickup's engine shudders and dies, but he knows, even as he takes those extra seconds, forearms crossed over the steering wheel and head down to gather his thoughts or his strength or maybe just his nerve, that he is not alone. Out of the truck and across the farmyard to the lowest step on the porch. He waits there, fingers tucked into his back pockets, chin tipped down as his eyes vaguely focus on the glow of moonlight off the old floorboards in front of him.

"Well?" his uncle finally asks from the dark corner of the porch where he likes to sit on the rickety swing that's been there as long as Luke can remember, and probably for a few decades before that.

"Well," he answers back, blowing all the air out of his lungs before breathing more in. He lifts his head and turns in the general direction of where the older man sits. "I'm healthy."

Even he is not sure whether or not it's meant to be a joke, but neither of them laughs. Or speaks, and the only sound for a few seconds that stretch on to eternity and back again is his boot sole scraping restlessly on the stair above where he stands. Feels like a decision when he stops fidgeting and steps up onto the porch.

"I'm I-A all the way, Jesse." As if there was any other possible outcome from his day spent moving from one station to the next in the Summit Federal Building. Table to table, coughing for the stethoscope, reading eye charts, presenting his tongue, teeth and gums for the inspection – and answering questions. His best hope might have lain right there, if only he could have said that yes, he did have a felony conviction for the distillation and transportation illegal liquor. But he's never been caught.

Standing on the porch now, and he can just about see the curve of his uncle's cheek, his salt and pepper beard below. Sucks in a breath and waits for it: the pointless and unanswerable question that always manages to get asked at times when big things happen. Like when he came to the farm in the first place, screaming for his mama, and some years later when Lavinia first got sick. _How do you feel about that, Luke? _As if there's anything to feel, other than angry that his life's been yanked out of his control _again_, as if it matters one damn whit how he feels. As if—

"So what's next?"

It's not the question that he's been waiting so hard for that the back of his neck aches from the tension in his shoulders. But it's equally ridiculous.

"I get inducted." There is a better tone of voice he could have said it in, the sort that doesn't halfway call the man an idiot for asking. But then again, he's had better days.

His uncle, it seems, knows that. Or simply refuses to respond in kind. Slight movement, creak of old wood; Jesse rocking slightly in the swing. Silence until Luke's eyes fall back to the floorboards beneath him.

"Ain't there no other possibilities?" It's the kind of question that makes perfect sense in negotiable circumstances. Like dealing with Doc Petticord and paying in chickens instead of cash, or haggling Harvey Essex down to a fine instead of jail time when evidence of their illegal income makes its way into the revenuer's hands. But this isn't like that, it's not some homegrown Hazzard adventure that's akin to playing an adult version of _let's pretend_; the world he's poised on the rim of is not subject to the shifting ethics of an aging sheriff and a corrupt county commissioner.

"I could enlist." Not as crazy as it sounds, at least that's what he's been telling himself in the last few hours since the idea first occurred to him. It could actually give him some measure of control over when he serves, and what does when he gets there. Definitely over which branch of the service he winds up in. He's a Duke, a natural flier, and maybe the Air Force—

"Luke." One word, a single syllable, but that's all his uncle needs in order to scold him. "That'd be like taking 'shine to Harvey Essex's office and handing yourself over for a prison sentence." Agitated, lecturing; Jesse's so upset that he forgets that it's the middle of the night and that there are a pair of youngsters who have school tomorrow sleeping a just few thin walls away. On the edge of yelling, but he takes a deep breath and calms himself down. "There's some time now before they induct you, right?"

"A few months," he confirms. His voice sounds deep in his own ears, kind of hollow, but maybe that's just because his throat is so tight that it's hard to push the words through it.

"Them few months is your best hope then. Maybe—maybe there won't be any need for new soldiers by then. Maybe both sides will work out their differences." And maybe Maudine is actually a unicorn in disguise, but Luke's not holding his breath in hope. "Son," the man sighs, sounding old, tired. Resigned, because Jesse always wishes for the best, but he's not capable of holding onto faith that is false. "If you want to serve your country, you know I ain't gonna stand in your way. I'd just as soon you didn't get killed, is all." Well, that makes two of them. "Ain't there no other way?"

He's exhausted, suddenly. Or maybe it's been building all day, but he forgot to notice because he was too busy getting ordered to sit, to stand and move, to present parts of himself for inspection. Either way, he's wrung out and there's a porch railing just a few steps away. One that's solid when he sits on it, even if the paint has long since chipped off, one with a post that he can lean his shoulder against and know that it will hold his weight, because he replaced it himself not three years back. The beam it's affixed to is one that runs the width of the kitchen of the house he grew up in, on the most beautiful parcel of land in Hazzard County.

"Jesse," he asks, letting his legs dangle and swing like he hasn't since they grew long enough to reach the floor, even when sitting in the tallest of the kitchen chairs. "Would you be all right here without me? Running the farm and the business with just Bo and Daisy?" His uncle doesn't like the question; it's there in how he snorts like a bear that missed the trout and got a snout full of water for his efforts. Like a man who lost his brothers and then his wife, and maybe he figures it's not fair for him to be asked to give up even one more thing. "Tell the truth, now."

But those last words are unnecessary. Whether it's thin air or Bibles stacked ten high that he's swearing on, Jesse is compelled to honesty. Even if he'd prefer not to answer at all.

"It wouldn't be easy. But we'd survive." Empty, resigned voice.

It would be easier on the two of them, Luke reckons, if he'd pulled some fool stunt that nearly got him and his cousins killed, and Jesse could take him out to the barn and holler at him at full volume before pulling out the whip. This low toned conversation is taking its toll on them both.

"What about without both me and Bo?"

"Luke," comes out like a rebuke or a lecture, like his uncle suspects him of planning to run away with his cousin in tow. "You know there ain't no way for me and Daisy to run this place. You remember how when you was little tykes I used to have to let J.D. Hogg do my delivering for me. And that man, he ain't lived an honest day in his whole life." His uncle's voice raises into that wheedle that normally grates against his nerves, rife with ire as it is. But tonight it's as sweet as a lullaby, familiar in a world that's been turned on its head. "He was overcharging my customers and keeping the profit for himself, and that was before he started swapping out my 'shine for his. Why, he'd sell my customers his rotgut, and save what I'd brewed up to sell to his regulars, passing it off as his own. I was never so happy as when you'd growed up enough to help me and your aunt in the fields, and then Daisy and Bo got older and…" the little tale-telling session fades out. Which is just as well, because the next major event in their lives was, to his memory, Aunt Lavinia's passing. "I ain't as young as I was back then, and now that he's the commissioner, J.D. would as soon arrest me as breathe if'n I asked him to run my 'shine for me. No, there ain't no way that I can manage without you both."

"Then there ain't no other options," Luke informs him. "Oh, I could try to get a II-C deferment, and it might even work. But I'd have to say that you couldn't manage the farm without me." Which would be a lie. "But," more importantly, "if I let them induct me as I-A, then there ain't no way that Bo can get drafted. Because I'll already be in the service, and you really can't run the farm with both of us gone."

"Luke," tries to scold again, but—

"Jesse, I'm going into the service, one way or another. Either I enlist or I let them induct me. If one of us Dukes is going, it's gonna be me. This here decision's been made." And he doesn't want to argue over it, doesn't want to justify or even think about it for even one more minute. So he juts his chin and gets to his feet. "Good night." He's got a hot date with his pillow; tomorrow starts as early as any day, no matter how long today has been.

There's a sudden, warm grip around his wrist that he doesn't really want there, but it gets followed by a tug. It's got a clear meaning, one that can't be ignored. _Come to me, boy_. So he does, he lets himself be pulled right down onto the swing next to his uncle, feels it sway under their combined weight as broad arms wrap themselves around him. He tells himself that he's too old for this, but finds his head resting on that familiar, soft shoulder anyway. "I love you, son," gets mumbled in his hair, and Luke closes his eyes, because surely that'll prevent any tears from slipping out. The swing rocks underneath him and he's just a kid again, with Aunt Lavinia singing soothing songs in his ears to help him settle down after a bad day that ended in a whipping.

"Your cousins has been asking about you." Of course they have, he's been missing for the better part of the day. "I done like you asked, I ain't told them where you was. But come tomorrow, you're going to have to tell them yourself… unless you want me to." But Luke shakes his head and bites his lip against making any sound. It would probably only come out as a childish squeak anyway. "All right," Jesse answers what he hasn't said out loud, rheumatic fingers tangling in Luke's hair. "It's all right."

Eventually, somehow, he manages to disentangle himself from the arms of the man who raised him, to say good night again and mean it this time, and to make his way through the house to his own bedroom.

His cousin is lying perfectly still in the bed next to his, but he's not fooling anyone.

"Go to sleep Bo," is his whispered command. It might be after midnight, technically tomorrow already. But he's got no plans to talk to another person until he's had a few hours of peace and quiet, maybe even some sleep.

* * *

"You shouldn't have stayed up so late," his cousin scolds when he's slow-moving through the barn, enough so that a goat gets under his feet without him really noticing. Makes him stumble a few steps until Luke reaches out a hand to catch him. He stays upright, but a couple of the eggs that were poised at the top of the basket roll out to crack against the hay-strewn floor. Mere hairline fractures, but they won't pass the Daisy test, so he puts the basket down on a bale of hay long enough to pick them up and throw them as far as he can through the open doors at the end of the barn. If there's a little extra spin on them, well, that's not his fault.

"Look who's talking," he snarls back. All day and half the night, Luke was out. Down in Atlanta, and no matter how Bo phrased the question, he couldn't get Jesse to tell him what Luke went for. In fact, all he really got for his efforts was the threat of a tanned hide.

Trips to Atlanta are infrequent and just about sacred. A chance to get away from the same old routines of school and farm work, to see a landscape of buildings instead of trees and fields and emptiness. To prowl the bevy of used car lots and dream of owning something they'll never be able to afford, and maybe, if they can talk their way into it, test drive one or two of them. Or sometimes those trips are a chance to see a movie when it comes out, instead of having to wait six months for it to make to the Hazzard Theater. And every now and then, he and Luke simply find themselves a corner, lean up against the cool concrete of whatever building happens to be there, and watch the girls go by. In skirts that barely graze the tops of their thighs, or jeans tight over their hind ends and most of the way to their knees, where they flare out to almost the width of a skirt. Smart ones wear decorations on their back pockets to draw the eyes there, but then again, most of the girls look best from the front. Thin blouses that reveal more than any Hazzard girl would dare, and the truly brave ones walk around in halter tops.

Doesn't matter what they do, the Duke boys in Atlanta means a good time, and going down there without Bo is one of the low-downest things his cousin has ever done. All day and most of the night he was out having fun without Bo, and injury got followed by insult when Luke came into their bedroom somewhere after midnight and told him to go to sleep. As if his kid cousin had nothing better to do than force himself to stay awake for hours just so he could find out what on earth Luke had gotten up to all day. (All right, so he had fought sleep for just that very purpose. But Luke had no right to _know_ that, not without being told.)

And to cap off a perfectly lousy twenty-four hours, it was Jesse's hand shaking his shoulder at dawn, telling him to get up and get after the chores. "Leave him to sleep a bit," their uncle had said, looking over at where Luke was stretched out on his side, right arm under his head, and showing no signs of waking up any time soon. Which was fine, it was just great really. How Luke didn't have to go to school, could run off to Atlanta at will and stay out carousing half the night, and didn't have to get up for chores.

"I ain't the one that was out half the night, doing who knows what." Even if it was Jesse's intention to let the oldest of his kids sleep in, Luke had only been a few minutes behind him in getting up and out here. But his eyes are red-rimmed, his hair is a mess, and his disposition is downright surly.

"I know," Luke's mouth agrees, even if his body is tensed for a fight. "We got to talk about that, Bo." Serious, dark and oozing with regret or apology and Bo doesn't want to hear it. Not when at the end, no matter how much of an adventure Luke describes, whatever kind of fun he got up to without having to drag his little cousin along, there's going to have to be forgiveness and a handshake.

"Ain't nothing to talk about." But as much as he wants to, he doesn't mean it. Even if his forgiving nature isn't due to make an appearance until after breakfast at the earliest, he doesn't like not knowing things. Maybe his words are more of a challenge than anything: _convince me you had a good reason to leave me behind_.

Mumblings from his cousin, a hand running through those uncombed brown curls, making a complete disaster of what was simply a mess before. Those bright blue eyes meeting his like second thoughts and regrets, then they're gone, looking out into the grass where the broken eggs got tossed a minute ago. "Ain't no way around it," seems to be a decision, some kind of an answer to those inaudible words. "Sit." Luke points to a hay bale, but Bo's not interested in getting ordered around right now. He stands his ground, hands on hips, glowering at the boy who is not quite meeting his eyes. A sigh. "Suit yourself," Luke says. "I had to go into Atlanta to keep an appointment, cuz. A medical exam, by the Selective Service." Words are coming out like buckshot, staccato, rapid-fire, no room for interruption. "I'm going to get drafted."

Too fast, even, for Bo to get a grip on them. His mouth is open, but no words are coming out.

"Bo," and there's a warm hand on his shoulder, a gentle squeeze. "We talked about this."

Well, yeah. Sort of, in the abstract. Or at least it seemed a pretty danged remote possibility at the time.

Because their lives are predictable, they have a rhythm. He wouldn't go so far as to say that moonshine running is routine, but it has firm boundaries. Things move fast, teeter on the edge of danger without ever tipping over. No one gets hurt or goes to prison, no one has died since Aunt Lavinia did, and no one leaves home. So it's not his fault that conversations about lottery numbers and the odds of getting conscripted held no meaning for him until now.

"You ain't," is about all he can manage to say, his voice high and cracking like it only does when he's trying to talk some pretty little cheerleader into a double Duke date.

Hand tightening down on his shoulder, then Luke's voice in that same tone he uses to convince Sheriff Coltrane that there's not now, nor has there ever been, any moonshine in the trunk of their car. "It ain't gonna be so awful, cuz." Or maybe it's that timbre that urges Bo to breathe after he's taken a hard hit to the solar plexus in a pick-up game of football. Soothing, slow talking, calm, and he doesn't want any part of it. Not when he's being told that it'll only be a handful of years that Luke'll be gone – as if days don't already stretch out into forever without Luke in school with him – and not when his cousin's talking about the money he'll earn in the service going toward the two of them buying themselves a real race car.

"Bo!" gets hollered after him, and it's only then that he realizes that he is running away.


	5. Part One, Chapter Four

_**Author's Note: **Yeah, I'll be more reliable from now on and blah, blah, blah. I said it, and then promptly proved myself wrong. In my defense, the site's been rejecting my login for days now._

_

* * *

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**Chapter Four**

It's adrenalin that makes him shake off the tight hand that grabs him around the wrist when he starts to chase out after Bo, but then his better sense returns. "Sorry," he mumbles as he turns back to face his uncle

"I'll take care of him," Jesse instructs. "Ain't nothing you can say to make him feel better now."

"Uncle Jesse," he starts, because he has a whole thesis to present about how it's him that Bo goes to when he's upset, him the boy talks to and listens to and—

"Besides," his uncle interrupts, standing up to his full six feet and puffing out his chest. This here is a battle that Luke can't win, those snapping blue eyes inform him. "You got to go inside and talk to Daisy."

Which is how he comes to be in the kitchen, ready to drop a bombshell on his female cousin, when he still hasn't been able to make peace with the male one.

"Morning, sugar," she greets, just as sweetly as a bird singing in a tree. "Egg basket seems a little light," gets added when he hands it over and sets the milk pail up by the sink.

"Broke a couple," he says with a shrug. "Guess we was a little clumsy."

"Guess so," she answers back with a tight smile. "Maybe because you was out so late last night. What was you up to, Luke Duke?"

That's Daisy, diving headfirst into unknown waters, no thought about what sort of skull-crushing boulders might await her under the surface. "I went down to Atlanta."

"Well, I know that much," she says, cracking the first of the eggs into the old iron skillet that's already heating on the stove. If he'd been smart he would have told her to wait a bit on the cooking, what with how half their family is likely to be somewhat late to breakfast. "Bo sure was sore about that."

Yeah, he kind of got that impression.

"He kept on asking Uncle Jesse what it was you sent for, if it was tractor parts or a new potbellied stove or maybe a replacement handle for that old pump. Whatever it was, he figured it had to be big or there was no way you would've taken the pickup."

Oh, it was big all right.

"Anyways, Uncle Jesse just about wore out his teeth telling him to stop worrying about what you was up to and eat his dinner then finish his homework, but it wasn't until Jesse started heading off into his bedroom to get the switch that Bo finally let up. Came mighty close to getting his hide whipped."

One of the hazards of being a Duke; the patriarch has compelled him to talk to his cousins, neither of whom ever pauses enough in their own chatter to listen to him.

"I bet he stayed up until you got home, too. No wonder you boys was dropping the eggs out there."

"Daisy," he finally interrupts. Doesn't seem fair that he has to work so hard to get these words out when they're nothing he really wants to say in the first place. "I wasn't in Atlanta to get no plow parts or any of them other things you said."

"I didn't say it, Bo did. I reckoned you was—"

"Daisy." Has to stop her again before she gets to listing all the mischief she imagines he got up to. "I wasn't in Atlanta because I wanted to be, believe me. I was there for a physical exam."

"You ain't sick," she declares, as if firm denial can keep bad things from being true.

"No, I ain't." But Daisy's going to be easier to deal with than Bo was. She's already forgotten all about her cooking, leaving the eggs to blacken in the pan.

"Oh, Luke," comes out in an anxious whisper, and then her arms are around his neck and there's nothing he can do but hug her back. The girl knows, she's watched some of their older friends get mailed the very same notice that summoned Luke to the Selective Service Branch. "I'm so sorry."

He smiles into her hair. Funny to get apologized to for being healthy enough to serve in the armed forces, but they always knew he would be. Old Enos Strate was too flat footed for service, but she and Luke both remember fearing what would happen to their clumsy friend if he did get inducted.

"It's all right," is an automatic response to her apology. He can't imagine what else he could have said, even if there's no way in the world that his upcoming conscription is all right with either of them. "It'll be a couple of months anyway," he consoles, even if he's not sure what kind of a difference it makes.

The girl nods and holds on just that much more tightly, as if those skinny arms could keep him here forever.

"Eggs are burning." Maybe it's to preserve his breakfast, or maybe it's his rib cage that's in jeopardy. Either way, it works. The girl lets him go to tend to her cooking.

"Does Bo know?" she asks, eyes on the food in front of her. Makes the conversation easier on him if they're not touching or looking at each other.

"Yeah," he says into the close space of the cabinet under the sink where he's digging for the milk bottles and funnel. "I reckon he and Jesse might miss breakfast. He didn't take it so well."

"Where is he?"

"Don't know—" Luke starts to answer when they hear the clomping of feet on the porch steps. Gives him just enough time to get back to his feet and say, "Right here, seems like," before their kin comes through the door.

"Morning, Daisy," Bo mumbles as he crosses the room, followed by "sorry, Luke." And then the boy's arms are around him in what is meant to be a conciliatory hug. But Luke's not fooled, he can feel the way his cousin's heart races, the ferocity with which he's restraining himself, forcing calm where none wants to be. Obeying Jesse by apologizing, but Luke's not buying it. The tense body in his arms is exactly like holding onto a lit stick of dynamite and waiting for it to blow.

* * *

_April 1971_

If school was painful before, it becomes abject torture as March blossoms into April. Made worse by the warm spell that forces teachers to crack the windows and let some air into the stifling classrooms. Boards propping the heavy oaken frames open by about four inches, and it's enough to usher in the smell of the world blooming around them. Sweet flowers and the freshly cut lawn outside the main entrance, and he could swear he hears the bees flitting from here to there in search of nectar. The sun shines, and here he sits. Two more months of school and just about two more months of Luke, and it's just not fair that he should lose any of the short time he has left with his cousin.

He finds himself at the sharp ends of teachers' tongues reminding him that they're not up at the front of the classroom for their own benefits but for his, and nearly gets himself kicked off the baseball team for skipping practices to go home and be with Luke. Gets lectures from Jesse about keeping commitments and responsibility to others, gets rolled eyes from Luke. "Go back and _play_, Bo. Ain't nothing to do around here but a lot of work." Even Daisy tsks at him and reminds him how small the town is, and that all his teachers will be seeing Jesse at church on Sunday; does he really want to annoy every last one of them at once?

And those are the first dizzying, distracted days following that morning in the barn with Luke. Lasts through the weekend and church (where Daisy's predictions of teachers swarming to his uncle to report on his inattentiveness prove to be unfounded), right on through until Monday morning's math class. Calculations in his brain having nothing to do with what's being laid out on the board, and somehow he comes out the other end of the hour feeling like he's solved a problem all the same.

Luke is the best shuck-and-jiver that Bo has ever known, and considering that he grew up in Hazzard County amongst some of the finest home-grown connivers in the south, that's really saying something. Old silver-tongue has talked his way into trouble and back out again more times than either of them really knows, has negotiated with everyone from girls' angry daddies cocking shotguns loaded with rock salt to revenuers bearing handcuffs and search warrants, has never in his life done a single damn thing he didn't want to. The Selective Service can lust after Luke Duke same as half the town's girls do every day. It doesn't mean they're going to get him. The fools have simply tipped their hands by calling him in for a physical examination a few months before they plan to induct him. Heck, with that much lead time, Luke can get himself and the whole rest of Hazzard out of having to go off to Vietnam.

Because although he's never been in a history class that studied it, and Jesse doesn't allow a television into his house to watch the news about it, Bo knows the dangers of that war. He's heard about the number of boys that don't come back, or lose some part of themselves in the jungles over there. He reckons that if the armed services wanted Luke to help them grow corn or bale hay for a few years, he'd have his complaints about it, but he'd deal with it. But borrowing his cousin so he can get shot at, well, that's just unacceptable.

And he's sure Luke feels the same. Service, well, Luke does his share and he doesn't complain too much about it – rebuilding the church steps when they show signs of rot, playing peewee ball with the kids in the orphanage – but his cousin's never been in a hurry to get himself killed.

Which is why he'll get himself out of this, and that knowledge allows Bo to enter Social Studies with a smile, and even to pay some modicum of attention to the lecture. Enough to answer a question when it's directed at him, and Miss Price just about has herself a cow. By the time he makes it through the day with afternoon baseball practice looming, he's shocked a few more teachers with his brilliant contributions to their classes. The discussion he has with Coach Hall at the outset of training is brief and uncomfortable, and ends with him running laps while the rest of the team works on their fielding, but he stays on the team and even keeps his position at shortstop. By the time he makes it home for the day, he's sweaty and tired, but he still manages to sing as he works beside his cousin in the barn.

Luke has a funny look on his face, one that wonders where the sullen blonde boy of the past few days has gone. But instead of asking difficult questions, his cousin just picks out a harmony and sings along.

* * *

"You hungry, sugar?" The sun is burning the back of his neck, and he's been choking on the dust that's blowing around the farmyard all morning. He wouldn't turn down a glass of lemonade, should one magically appear in front of him. The notion of food doesn't hold much of his interest. "If you say no, I'm just going to feed you anyway."

"Daisy," he scolds. "Lunch is only a couple of hours away. I ain't got no reason to be eating nothing right now. Just pay attention, would you?"

Too much time; too little. He's been faced with that dilemma since the morning after he returned from Atlanta. A month of trying to teach his cousins how to survive without him nearby, of trying to tidy up his life so he can walk away from it, and he couldn't succeed in all he wants to do if he had years.

And that same month has been endless, what with how he's had to tolerate Daisy's urge to fatten him up, Jesse's constant head-patting affection, and Bo's – as always, his kid cousin is the wild card. Moping one minute, ridiculously cheerful the next, and regardless of his mood, completely unwilling to discuss the future. Other than driving on moonshine runs, that is.

The boy has taken full advantage of the fact that he gets to be behind the wheel on runs, even if he's sticking his head in the sand as to the reasons why he's suddenly allowed to drive. Quiet runs mostly, nothing more than a pleasant little jaunt across empty countryside, having nothing to do with the realities of the trade.

"Take it up the Ridge Road," Luke had instructed him on last night's delivery, got a cocked eyebrow in response. It was like telling a rabbit to take a slow stroll across the path of a coyote; he reckoned that curl to his cousin's lip was warranted. "If you think you can handle it. You sure ain't going to learn nothing about what it's really like to run 'shine so long as every delivery is like a Sunday afternoon drive." Not even slightly subtle, it was a straight up goad. The kind even Bo couldn't miss or resist.

"Fine," the boy had snapped, spinning the wheel to the right, spitting dirt and rocks out behind them. "You want me to turn on the headlights, too?" Smug, so sure of himself. A little provocation and Bo's bravado always did get bigger than his brains.

"You can hold off on that. I reckon we'll attract enough attention just by cruising up the pavement."

And they had. Not two miles after leaving the shadows of the old dirt road that skirted the banks of the river, they'd grown a tail four cars long, three with flashing lights, but that last was the one that could really hurt them. Harvey Essex, bringing up the rear.

"All right," had tried to sound cool, calm, like the teacher he was pretending to be. Imparting a lesson on something as stagnant and unchanging as history, even if his hand was tightly wrapped around the frame of the passenger window. "Now lose them."

And he learned, right quick, what Jesse had been trying to tell him about Bo's relative youth and impetuosity. Weaving from one lane to the other as if the car was nothing more than an extension of his body and the pavement would be as forgiving as a football field – the boy just begged for trouble.

"Don't—" Luke tried, but the momentum changed direction on him mid-word, slamming his shoulder into his cousin's and putting a hitch into his words. "Bo," and he was back against the door. "Don't let them get up next to you." Oh, things could turn bad in a heartbeat out here, cars getting shoved off the east cliff or the west, and it wouldn't matter which side they tumbled over; the valley was a long way down. "Just straddle the yellow line." Because this wasn't a foot chase where quick direction changes would be the best evasive maneuver. "Stay ahead of them and find an escape route."

Easier said than done, but Luke already knew that. This right here was what Bo had to learn the hard way – that it was a lot easier to sit in the passenger seat and make suggestions than it was to sit on the other side and make decisions.

But the boy was as fearless as ever, hammer down and holding steady in the center of the road.

"Luke," he complained. "Ain't you got no ideas?"

Yeah, he did. And if he was a fair man, he'd share them. After all, Bo had always been generous in voicing any suggestions that he came up with when their roles were reversed. But fairness had no place in this situation, not when somewhere before summer heat could reach its peak, the boy would be on his own for deliveries, with no one to whisper solutions into his ear.

"Just keep her humping and look for some way that you can disappear," he said, because he wasn't cold-hearted, simply realistic and responsible.

"Fine," Bo groused back at him testily and Luke couldn't halfway blame him.

Took a few sulky, silent moments of flying down a major roadway with lights blaring through the back window before Bo spoke again.

"What time is it, Luke?" Silly little grin on the boy's face, and no reason Luke could think of for it to be there.

"I don't know," he answered back. It was too dark in the car to read his pocket watch. That was, if he bothered to dig it out of his jeans, which he had no plans to do.

Skid, back end of the car swinging around and he couldn't be sure that he wasn't hollering like Daisy always did whenever she found a spider lurking in a corner of the house. Momentum changed along with their direction, and suddenly it was a charge down Elm Street that would have made Robert E. Lee proud. Town rapidly whizzing by his window, and Luke couldn't swear it was the best idea his kid cousin had ever had. Not that it mattered, he couldn't take it all back now, couldn't blink and find himself back up on the ridge advising Bo not to come this way.

"You hear it?" Bo yelled across the car at him.

"What?" About all he could hear was the wind gusting through the car and the pounding of his own heart in his ears.

"Me neither," came the illogical answer.

And then they were circling the town square, a line of cars with screaming sirens right behind. One Way signs all around, but it was only a matter of time before one of the boys on their tail got the bright idea to turn around and go against traffic, and then the whole square would turn into a giant game of pinball. Cars ricocheting off each other, the curbs, other cars parked around and just about the time that Luke was picturing carnage, Bo was talking again.

"You hear it?"

"What?" come out frustrated, incredulous, just plain—

And then he heard it.

"Go," he commanded, even if he had sworn to himself that he was going to leave every one of tonight's decisions up to Bo. "Now!" he added as they spun around the corner to where Route 36 branched off.

"Ten four," his cousin answered with a self-satisfied little grin, but his smug self-assuredness would only be warranted if he could manage not to get them both killed.

"Go!" he hollered again, because it was going to be close. Rush of wind, scream of sirens, wailing whistle and screech of metal on metal. Red warning lights in front, red pursuing lights in back, and Bo ignored them both. Squeal of tires as he jogged a quick left, and there was a looming shadow over Luke's side of the car. Only for a second and then they were in the clear again. Rattle and clatter of the eleven forty-five train rushing through, and the law was stuck on the west side of the tracks with a bullet-fast train between them and the Duke boys on the east side.

"That was close, boy," Luke half-scolded, half-congratulated.

"Worked, though, didn't it?" Pride in the blonde boy to his right, almost, but not quite, masking insecurity. _Did I do all right?_ not said, but Luke could hear it in his tone anyway.

"Worked real fine, cuz," he answered, his hand – slightly shaky from their close call – coming up to muss the boy's wild, blonde hair. "Real fine."

Almost midnight and he would have sworn the sun was shining, right there in Bo's smile.

"You just keep her humping, though." Because the train wasn't a long one, and they needed to disappear into the newly leafed-out kudzu before their admiring pursuers got to this side of the tracks.

And the boy had learned, even if he hadn't been willing to admit to why he was getting the lesson in the first place.

Daisy's presenting an entirely different sort of challenge. She's bright, capable, heck, she could do this stuff with her eyes closed if only she'd pay attention in the first place. Mechanics are as deeply ingrained in Duke blood as moonshine is. And what he's trying to teach her now marks the point where those two lines intersect.

Telling Summer it was over between them was the easy part, but then, that's why he was with the girl in the first place. He always knew she'd move on easily enough when this time came. Getting his family to do the same turns out to be slow torture.

"Look here," he instructs, trying get Daisy to focus on something other than stuffing him full of her various confectioneries. "This right here is the coil wire. You ever want to disable a car, you just got to pull this out." He hopes she'll use this trick on revenuers, not boys she has designs on.

"Hmm," the girl hums close to his ear. "Like this?" She reaches under the hood of his Falcon to unplug both ends and in a second she's got a six inch cable dangling from her perfectly manicured fingertips. Amazing how the girl can work on a car and never get grease under her nails.

"Yep," he answers, reaching out to take the coil back from her, but she jams it into the back pocket of her jeans.

"Well, since you can't go nowhere until I give this back, what say we go inside for some pie?"

* * *

_May 1971_

Loud and rough, apt to twist the whole family up into a fit of temper. Uncle Jesse's wont to say that half the time Luke doesn't know how to be gentle and the other half he just plain doesn't want to be, and then there's this. His cousin leaning against the trunk of a tree, simply waiting. Silent, not yelling or demanding or even asking anything. Sure, his focus gives all appearances of being on the horizon, never turning to face what he's bracing his weight against, eyes never lifting from looking straight ahead of him. But he's not going anywhere, and it makes Bo feel like an idiot. Helps that he's already halfway there, hating himself for the raw feel to his throat, the moisture that collects in the corner of his eyes until there's no more room there and some small bit has to leak out.

"Leave me be," he squeaks out, but his big cousin never moves, doesn't turn around to catch sight of where he sits, up here among the leaves. Only three branches above the low one that they use to pull themselves up here, and Luke could easily come after him, but he shows no signs of it.

"Ain't going nowhere," his cousin answers, steady voice betraying no anger or frustration. No fear of what's to come, either, not in the immediate future, when Jesse's due to start hollering about how it's dinner time and he darn well expects his boys to stop lollygagging and get in the house or face the whip, nor what's coming in three weeks when things are scheduled to get a whole lot worse. Dissected down to the tiniest nuance, all Luke's tone reveals is gentleness. Patience.

"Luke," comes cracking out of him, the sound of his heart breaking.

The boy he's known all his life, his protector, his strength, the very blood in his veins, turns to face him then. Arm up, unwavering, offering him a hand down. Not going anywhere; even if all the blood runs down his arm and his fingers turn blue, Luke will be waiting for him. Breeze across his face and he can feel the chill along the jagged track where a tear has slipped over his cheekbone.

"Please," he begs, because he's not ready yet. He wants to work himself up into a fit of temper, to build up enough rage to push and shove against things he has no control over, to strike out at his cousin instead of what he knows is going to happen instead. If he gets down now (his foot is already searching for a solid hold on the branch below him), he's going to be a mess (his weight is shifting as he descends), he's going to grab onto Luke (hand out to balance himself), he's going to cling (both arms wrapped around that lowest bough), he's going to bury his head in that strong shoulder (legs swinging free now, then he's dropping, Luke's hand against his back to make sure he falls straight down, doesn't land crooked and twist an ankle), and then he's going to cry.

Arms around him, quiet words in his ear, and it's not fair. Not fair by miles that he wants to hit his cousin, but he can't loosen his arms from where they're gripping around Luke's neck. Not fair that he's reduced to being a little boy again, when that postcard that's lying on the kitchen table is calling Luke away to become a man. Not fair that he's about to lose his cousin like he lost his mother and father, like he lost his aunt.

"Bo." The tone sounds ridiculously patient. Not like his easily-annoyed, sarcastic cousin at all. "You knew this was coming."

_This_ being that card, addressed to Lukas Keller Duke, and there could be no question who it was from when it included his cousin's middle name. The boy never liked anyone to know what it was, not from when he was little and begged their aunt to register him for school with just the middle initial. Only family and the government know that Luke bears his mother's maiden name between those other two.

Wasn't a surprise to Luke when it showed up with the day's mail, and it wasn't supposed to come as a shock to any of them. But—

"You was supposed to figure a way out of it," he complains into the cloth of his cousin's shirt.

A snort in his ear, and that's the Luke Duke he knows and wants to be angry with. "I wasn't never going to try to get out of nothing, Bo," helps his cause a little bit. Gives him the strength to shove at Luke, to try to separate himself far enough to maybe even take a swing at the boy, but those arms, strong from a lifetime of pushing and lifting and carrying heavy farm equipment, not to mention bearing Bo's weight as well as his own over creeks and streams, won't let him go.

Which leaves him to ask, or more like whine, "Why?" And when his conniving cousin doesn't seem to have an answer to that one, he follows up with the accusation, "You could have, if you wanted to." Not that he has any evidence to support that charge, other than that Luke has always gotten out of things he didn't really want to do. That and the fact that Bo had set his heart on his cousin staying right here.

He gets the breathing room he wanted a few seconds ago when Luke pulls back. Still doesn't let him go entirely, but grips his shoulders and holds him at arm's length.

"Cousin," he starts, and Bo reckons he knows where this is going. "There ain't no two ways about this. I'm going where they tell me to go." Which, in just under three weeks, will be the Summit Federal Building in Atlanta, except that this time he won't be coming back home. "It's what I got to do." And here it comes.

_Someday, you'll understand._ It's been the refrain of his young life. From Lavinia, when he had gotten chastised by a grumpy Jesse for asking why his uncle disappeared into the woods most nights, from Daisy when she started to worry more about what she looked like to the boys in school than she did about having fun, and from Luke. From Luke more often than any of them, whether it was a fishing trip that Bo wasn't allowed to go along on or his budding interest in girls. _Someday, you'll understand about whiskey and the opposite sex, about me going off where you can't follow, where I might never come back from—_

His voice cracks then, though he had no intentions of using it. A little cry, maybe closer to a whimper, and Luke's trying to pull him back into his arms.

"No," he musters, quiet, graveled, but clear. There's no point in letting Luke comfort him; starting right now he needs to figure out looking after himself. He's got about twenty sunrises and sunsets to work out how to deal with a world that doesn't include his oldest cousin. "I ain't—I ain't mad no more, Luke. I just need some time to myself." He points off vaguely across the road toward the dust-dry, empty fields that used to belong to old man Harper before he died, and now mostly constitute emptiness and the absence of life. "I'll be back after a while."

His big cousin looks at him for a second, piercing blue eyes that can tear the truth out of him even when he doesn't want to tell it, then mercifully they close. Nod of a dark head, and Luke lets him go and turns back to the house.

Dinner. Bo's going to miss it; Jesse's going to be livid. But, he realizes as he strikes out across the fields, barren but for the dried weeds and burrs that cling to the cuffs of his threadbare jeans, it'll be all right. Luke will place himself squarely between his younger cousin and the old man's anger, and protect him one last time.


	6. Part One, Chapter Five

**Chapter Five**

_June 1971_

When it comes right down to it, it's Daisy that makes him come up with a plan. If _mothering _is the right word for what his female cousin has been doing since his first trip to Atlanta, by this week it's come closer to _smothering_. There's not much of anything he can do, from the most boring chore to the most disgusting, that will get her to leave his side. She even helps him in cleaning up after the goats, a task he's never much wanted to let her do, what with how those slim fingers that are wielding the shovel as it scoops up goat dung are the self-same ones that'll be cooking his dinner tonight.

But concern for his health is not the sole reason he has to come up with some kind of a scheme to manage the situation. It's also that she's sticking so close that no one else can get near him. Sure, up through last week she'd been going off to school, and it was in those hours that he could slip into town to spend some time with the friends that he's about to leave behind. And he and Jesse work together most afternoons, and even some nights. It's Bo, really, that's gotten squeezed out of his day-to-day life. Then at night, when it's just the two of them in the room, the boy yawns, pulls his sheet up to his shoulders, and rolls over to face the wall instead of him. _'Night, Luke_ is about the most he ever gets out of him.

"Anything you want to do," is his offer to his female cousin.

"Anything?" He cringes inwardly at the smile she offers as she leans up against the splintering wall of Maudine's stall and watches him tinker with the tractor. He reckons he's going to be spending more time in the stores of Capitol City than he's ever wanted to.

"For one day," he stipulates. "You and me will do whatever you want."

"How long do I get to think about it?" She winces when she realizes the foolishness if the question. "I mean, what day?" Because they are closing in quickly on the end of his time in Hazzard.

School let out for the summer just this past Friday; he could say tomorrow and it would be reasonable. But he reckons it's only fair to let her think about what she wants.

"Tuesday," he suggests, which gives her approximately a day and a half to work it out. Kind of quick by Hazzard standards, really – things here like to meander just as slowly as the old Hatchapee River, which is closer to a lake these days. "And then me and Bo's going to do something on Wednesday or Thursday," which is sort of a presumptuous statement considering that the topic hasn't yet been raised between them. "Just us two." It's the best way he can figure to make sure that he gets to spend a good chunk of solo time with them both.

"All right," Daisy answers. "I know what I want to do." Well. So much for giving her time to think about it. "I want to hike up to the old quarry and go swimming."

"Really? That's your choice?" She didn't have to wait until he was about to get inducted into the selective service to ask for that one. It's been a favorite place to waste a summer's day since they got old enough to go that far from home on their own. He would have taken her out there any time she wanted.

"Yeah that's my choice, Luke Duke. What did you think I was going to say?" The girl has got a beautiful smile and a nasty right hook. Though what she does to his upper arm is more of a swat than a punch.

"Well," he hates to put ideas into her head, at least not when she can still change her mind, but he has to be honest. Otherwise the Duke blood that courses through his veins will boil in disgust at the lie. "I figured you'd want to go to Capitol City."

"Oh, sugar," she soothes, and when she takes that tone he could swear he hears Aunt Lavinia in her voice. "I reckon I don't need to ask you to do that. I mean," and those eyelashes that she's batted all her life come into play now. "I can take myself there whenever I want to. That is, as long as I can use your car while you're gone."

Seems a small enough price to pay. "You and Bo both get to use it." Besides, he was fully prepared for this to come up. "I'll leave it up to the two of you to work out the details." And up to Uncle Jesse to be the referee. Because his two younger cousins are as close as a pair of barn cats – they can be found huddling together against a cold wind, at least when they're not screaming at each other the whole night through.

The girl grins and Luke reckons that as long as she's flashing those teeth at Bo, he'll wind up handing over the keys to her as often as she wants. Then again, that blonde charm that oozes from the boy will most likely even the odds a little bit.

"And," he puts his foot down on the matter, "I don't want you going for no rides with boys in it, neither. That there car is a deadly weapon when it comes to courting."

"Luke," gets punctuated by a slightly more serious blow to his arm. "I can take care of myself."

Which only goes to show just how naïve she is. But he doesn't reckon he wants to report for induction with a frying pan-shaped knot on his head. So—

"All right," he agrees. "It's just that you're the prettiest cousin I've got." And Bo might just take exception to those words, but he's conveniently missing at the moment. "Which means I've got to make sure that nothing bad happens to you."

At least that's been his role all his life, and in a week he's going to have to walk away from it and trust that Bo will pick up where he leaves off. (And that Daisy will look after Bo in return.) But come Tuesday when they hike up to the quarry in cutoff jeans and old t-shirts with ratty towels draping from their hands, when the girl kicks off her leather boots and sprints to the edge of the highest rock to dive into the water, stretching out to her full length, her hair streaming out behind her, he reckons that there's no one in the world that can keep her out of trouble if she's bound and determined to find it.

* * *

It seemed like such a good idea at the time. Three weeks to practice being without Luke before it really happened, and as both Jesse and Coach Hall are fond of saying, practice makes perfect. By the time Luke was gone he reckoned he'd be awfully good at managing life without his cousin.

Except it couldn't ever really work out that way. Not in a family like his, where his uncle was after him from the first day to spend time with his cousin. He could ignore the old man's needling, and even Daisy's thinly-veiled jabs about how _someone_ had to keep the poor boy company and distract him from what was coming. He even managed to tune Luke out, mostly. Tried to shrug off the repeated invitation to spend a whole day together in the week before his cousin was due to report for induction and did a creditably good job of it until the request became relentless. Somewhere around the fifth time it got offered (_anything you want to do, cuz, anything at all _– precisely the sort of proposition he would have relished a few months ago when days in school dragged off into forever) he was getting close to telling Luke to take a flying leap, but he made the mistake of looking at him.

Same pushy older cousin he'd always been, farm-strong, mule-obstinate, standing tall with shoulders square and then there were his eyes. Blue as the sky, a distracting sort of color that easily hid whatever went on in the brain behind them. Useful trait when dealing with a revenuer that needed to be hoodwinked, but it was the sort of quality that could drive his kin mad. Most days, but now and again there were hints. Nothing much, just little twitches of eyebrows, the tiniest hint of a wince, a flick of movement.

"You really want to," he'd realized. Out loud, unfortunately.

Because here came Luke's confused look. "Yeah." And under that, something else—

"Hunting," he'd said quickly, to banish that something else from his mind or Luke's face, or, if he was particularly lucky, both.

A hunt, it had seemed a deviously clever plan to him at the time. Silently stalking their prey together, the sort of hushed activity where their bodies worked in tandem and their voices were, of necessity, silenced. Perfect choice, when it came down to it, for avoiding that something else that had flashed through Luke's eyes, which he hadn't wanted to see and didn't want to think about.

Except his cousin had outsmarted him, as Luke was wont to do. Had gone to Jesse and asked just how badly they were needed on the farm, and whether it couldn't be a two-day trip. As if the man who had raised them would deny that sort of a request from his oldest just before he was about to be shipped off to war.

Which is how it has come to pass that he sitting across a glowing fire circle from his cousin, watching the sparks dance off into the skies instead of looking into those eyes. Tent is set up, chicken is hissing and spitting on the old metal grill that they bring on these trips. The hunt was fruitless, so there's nothing to skin, and about the only obstacle he can put between himself and the boy across from him is the aluminum of his canteen. He tips his head back and takes a swig.

"Cousin." But there's only so much water he can drink, and he knows it. Eventually he has to lower the half-empty vessel and listen to whatever it is that Luke has to say. "I want—" Hesitation, uncharacteristic, uncomfortable. For them both, maybe, because that dark head shakes itself and he starts over. "I reckon it would be best if you kept an eye on Daisy. The girl doesn't have the first idea how pretty she's getting to be." True enough; their tomboy cousin has been growing out her hair and her legs and every part of herself. And Bo doesn't need one cousin to tell him to look after the other when he's already done so all his life. "But I figure it might be more important to let her look out for you sometimes, too. She needs someone to take care of."

This is one heck of an awkward conversation. Any other time he'd tell Luke to back off, to mind his own business. But the only business his cousin's got to tend to is readying himself for a life that neither of them knows a thing about.

And that something else is showing in those eyes again. That thing Bo doesn't want to see because he has no idea how to handle it. The mirror of his own self, and that's how he recognizes it.

Vulnerable. Luke's vulnerable and scared and maybe just a little bit lost, even if he is sitting right here in these same dense woods they grew up wandering. It's unfathomable, it's backwards, and it's nothing Bo knows how to handle with any grace.

"And you both need to look after Jesse. He ain't as young as he used to be." _Stop_, he wants to say. Dukes take care of Dukes; it's in their genes and there's no need to talk about it.

Bo sucks in a breath, big one like he'll need if he's going to talk over his cousin, to tell him to shush now, or just maybe to run off into the cloaking darkness. (There's evidence to support him favoring this last option, what with how his weight shifts.) But a broad hand comes up, Luke silently asking him to let him finish. What can he do? He sighs the breath back out and relaxes into a slump.

"I know you don't want to go to school no more, Bo." Well, it's June. Right now school doesn't mean a whole lot to him one way or another. Come September it might – or it might not. Seems like what made him itch like he was allergic to the school's hard-backed chairs all through the spring was the urge to be out with Luke, and for this upcoming year there'll be no Luke to be out with. "But enjoy it while you can. There ain't never gonna be another place where there's all those sports for you to play." Sounds like something their uncle would say, or a teacher. Someone in authority, and he sure as hell doesn't want to hear it from Luke. His brain's on the way to tuning out when he hears, "Or girls to get with."

Goofy smile spreads across his face then, matching tight smirk over there on Luke's. Should have known his cousin wasn't going to get all preachy on him.

"I reckon I'll miss your graduation, though." And there it is again, that thing that puts a twist in the pit of his stomach. It's not much to have said; if it came from Daisy it would have been accompanied by heart-wrenching sobs of sorrow, from Jesse it would have elicited profound apologies sprinkled amongst rambling parables about the events that responsibility compels a man to miss, and even a fool like Dobro would have smacked him on the shoulder and said _sorry man, but have fun_. But the few words that make it past Luke's lips speak more than all those greater gestures combined. The rough-edged tone like they're being wrested from his throat against his will, the silence that follows them, and those damned eyes, so blue and so vulnerable. Hurting, maybe angry, definitely afraid.

Bo has felt each and every one of those emotions over the course of his life, and whenever it has happened, Luke has handled it. Somehow or other, by virtue of age or smarts or just plain luck—whatever the skill, it's Luke's alone. There his cousin sits, on the far side of a fire, in pain, and Bo doesn't have the slightest bit of knowledge of what to do about it.

Turns out he doesn't have to. He's caught there like a moonshiner in a flood light, unable to move any part of himself including his mouth, when Luke unscrews the top to his own canteen and instead of taking a sip, sloshes the water out at Bo. Most of it misses, crackling into the fire, splashing to the dirt, but there's a big enough splatter on his shirt that he has no choice but to retaliate. Except there's not a lot left in his canteen nor in Luke's, so within seconds they are out of ammunition and the only option is to go hand-to-hand, trying to push each other's faces into the dirt just outside of the glow of the fire circle. Giggling and wrestling and if somewhere in the middle of the melee his arms get tangled around Luke while Luke's are wrapped around him, if they hold on for a few moments and it feels an awful lot like they're comforting each other, neither of them mentions it.

* * *

It was this right here that made him want this trip to be just him and Jesse. Or in truth, he'd wanted to come as alone for this as he did the medical exam, but there were practicalities to be considered. Since this is by nature a one-way journey he couldn't take a family vehicle and abandon it in some concrete parking garage in downtown Atlanta, so he had to bring along one of his kin, and he'd figured that the patriarch was the best choice.

But those dark eyes had sparked at the suggestion, then squinted down hard at him as the old man worked himself up into a fine fit of temper.

"I know you ain't one for goodbyes, Luke. You think if you just slide on out of here easy it ain't gonna hurt no one. But them two in there," his cousins, inside the house and doing the supper dishes while he and Jesse were a safe distance away in the barn, bedding down the livestock. One last night in Hazzard and if he'd gotten his way he would have worked through the dark hours, trying to do all that he could to make the rest of summer and on through harvest go more easily on the family that he was leaving behind. But he was about to be ushered back inside to spend the evening looking at the crumbling photo albums, reminiscing about parents he hardly remembered, an aunt that could still bring a tear to Jesse's eye, and a childhood shared with the young cousins on either side of him. Just not until the lecture got done. "They's going to miss you when you're gone. You really reckon it's better for that missing to start sooner that it has to?"

That was where he was supposed to dip his chin and say _no, sir_. But he couldn't, because what difference would two hours make when he was due to be gone for years? And what good could come of dragging the whole bunch of them all the way down to Atlanta to just watch him get herded into a military line with a bunch of other boys when they could stay home and imagine that where he was going was no less pleasant than an extended camping trip?

"Well, it don't matter what you think," Jesse had stormed like he was reading Luke's mind. "We's all going. Together."

Together being somewhat relative. At the moment, he's bumping along in the unforgiving bed of the pickup, watching behind as the dusty road to home disappears. Bo's bony shoulder occasionally knocks into his, but he'd bet good money (if he had any) that it's accidental. For the most part the boy's trying to keep to himself over there, blonde hair whipping in the wind to cover up his face. And when Luke stops leaning back to let his head rattle against the window that separates the bed of the truck from the cab, then turns to look inside where his other cousin rides with their uncle, he watches Jesse's hand squeeze her shoulder as she wipes her eyes. Maybe now the man who raised him has a clearer understanding of why this was a bad idea.

He's lucky, apparently. He's heard, here and there, that a lot of guys get orders to report at the crack of dawn, but the folded card in his shirt pocket clearly tells him to be at the Summit Federal Building at four in the afternoon. A half a day's reprieve, one last home-cooked meal that he couldn't find much room for amongst the dancing butterflies in his stomach. One final sweat-soaked walk around the farm to memorize every hill and rock, every leaf on the trees and drop of water in the creek, and he can't swear he wouldn't have preferred to have made this trip in the pre-dawn dark when he wouldn't have to see Hazzard departing in the distance as the clouds close in overhead. Thunderstorm's brewing, and he reckons it's a good thing that the family's about to reduce itself down to just three. On the way home his kin will all be able to fit into the dry safety of the cab.

He hopes to say goodbye to them at the curb, to hop out of the back of the pickup with the next-to-nothing he's brought with him (the clothes on his back, shoes on his feet and wallet in his pocket – the information sheet that got mailed to him even forbids his pocket knife) wave his hand, and disappear. But after an hour and a half of no sound other than the wind gusting in his ears and the hum of the engine, the truck slows into the traffic of downtown, then swings widely before the Summit Building. Jesse's looking for parking, and studiously ignoring Luke's attempts to get his attention and tell him just to pull over to the curb long enough for him to hop out.

"Let it be, Luke," Bo mumbles; the first words out of the boy in hours. They aren't strong or commanding – if they were, Luke could fight against them – they're something closer to resigned. So he sits back again, closes his eyes, and lets things take care of themselves. And lets his arm find a comfortable resting place on Bo's skinny shoulders. Hard to imagine the kid as taking on Luke's share of the farm work plus his own, but of course Daisy's going to be picking up part of the slack as well. She's slender but surprisingly strong, and what with the upcoming year being her last in school he might have wanted her to have more time to herself to enjoy it, but there's nothing he can do about that now.

Movement stops, and he opens his eyes to a sense of vertigo. Dizzy and disoriented, and he reckons he might as well get used to it. Once he passes through those doors that loom at the other end of this parking lot, there's nothing that's going to be familiar.

He tries again to leave his family behind, except they're not opening their arms for hugs, they're trudging along with him toward the dingy gray building in front of them, the one that matches the rumbling sky and their miserable moods.

"You ain't gotta—" he tries.

But, "Luke," in Jesse's brooking-no-nonsense voice puts an end to it. Shoulders squared, he keeps moving forward, toward where he can see other clumps of families entering the doors ahead of them.

He expects that his kin will be turned away just inside the entrance, but it doesn't quite work that way. Efficiency greets them, with inductees herded one way and families the other, and firm voices hollering at them to move along or else they'll lose their chance to say goodbye. There's a line to stand in, a simple form to fill out and sign, swearing that he is, in fact, one Lukas Keller Duke, and then he's shuffled off to the waiting room.

Here, in a space teeming with strangers, heavy with tears and whirling with the movement of mothers wringing their handkerchiefs, fathers shaking their sons' hands, girlfriends kissing their beaux one last time, is where he is meant to say goodbye to his family. There are so many people and so much noise that he feels lost, like he might not recognize his own kin.

There was a time when being the driver on a moonshine run made his breath run short and his stomach twist up into precisely this same knot. The flashing speed of it, death looming just the smallest miscalculation away, the threat of prison chasing him around hairpin turns, over rickety bridges and through cut-stone tunnels, into darkness so thick there was no telling what dangers lay inside of it. His first few deliveries were run with eyes squinted down small enough that they might as well have been closed in prayer. Until his fourth run, that was, when he actually did pick up a tail. Not sure at first what it was, so he'd taken a turn onto a dirt road that led nowhere important, and the car behind him followed. Right then all the things he'd worried about became real and there was no way to face the genuine danger lurking around him with anything but wide-open eyes. Playing hide-and-seek with a revenuer through the kudzu and weeping willow trees, and in those crazy moments it became fun. A game, nothing more nor less, and he was good at games. Won them just about every time he played, and this had been no different. He led the chase toward the swamp, skirted the edge of a bog, then made the sort of sudden direction change that no one could follow him through. Heard the splash, saw the water arc up into the moonlight, followed by the sucking gurgle as the revenuer's car settled into the muck, and from then on he loved making deliveries, especially when things got hairy.

Regardless of what awaits him, he forces himself to believe it will be no more hazardous than a moonshine run. Sucking in a breath and letting it out easy, he focuses on the faces around him until he sees a familiar, bearded one next to a pair that is young, innocent. He stands sturdy for them, letting Jesse tell him to be safe, tolerating the way Daisy rests her head against his chest and cries, opening his arms for Bo and pretending not to feel how the body that fits against his quivers with barely contained emotion.

He tells them all to take care of each other, and then he's shuttled away one last time.

* * *

He knows he had parents once, and that his little family did not live in this farmhouse. Sketchy memories of sunshine and a sing-song voice are all he has, and he can't swear that those took place anywhere but here.

He's been told they were a happy threesome living in the cabin built into the ridge of Little Kennesaw Mountain, that he smiled a lot and was always to be found snuggled in his mother's arms. But he has no recollection of the cradle or the crib he must have slept in; his memories start here in this room. The tick of the windup clock on the dresser, the shadows of light and dark thrown by the branches of the oaks swaying in the moonlight, the sound of Luke's groan whenever he crawled into the wrong bed in the middle of the night, frightened there by the creak of a footstep that he was sure belonged to a monster, or the fire that he'd just dreamed consuming the farmhouse.

Strange to lie here now and know that there'll be no rumbling snores to make him throw his pillow across the room in hopes of silencing them, no annoying voice in his ear announcing that it's morning and if he doesn't get his lazy butt up and do his share of the chores, he's going to get dumped in the ice-cold creek. Weird not to know Luke's exact whereabouts, and to think of this tiny room as oversized and sprawling. Downright unexplainable how a nearly-grown sixteen-year-old wants the light to stay on, even if it is approaching midnight.

Until, that is, the room shrinks up again, and the air gets close. All it takes is his Uncle Jesse padding by his door, then hesitating before cracking it open.

"Sun's coming up plenty early enough without you staying up all night waiting for it," is supposed to be some sort of wisdom. But it's nothing he wants to hear or think about, the light dawning on a day without the whole of his family right here.

It's funny, in a cruel, mocking sort of a way, that he thought he'd preempt this particular misery by pretending Luke was already gone. As if there was any way to prepare himself for the echoing emptiness of the bed next to him, the hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach. Riding down to Atlanta with the warmth of his cousin's shoulder and knee bumping against him and he could have grabbed him then and held on, but he chose instead to pretend that he wouldn't miss Luke, not one bit, when he was gone.

He nods his head in the general direction of his uncle, and curls onto his side, his back to the door.

"Bo," is gentle, and coming closer. "You want to talk about it?" Too close, almost within touching distance.

"I'd just as soon you turned off the light." It takes all of his effort to push those words out past his constricted throat. He hates the tell-tale squeak there. "And closed the door."

Because when he has nothing else in life, when famine has stolen his crops and illness has whisked away his loved ones, all a man has left is his pride. And a prideful man would never let his kinfolk – nor anyone else – see him cry. So he waits until the door clicks quietly closed with his family on the far side before letting the tears fall.


	7. Part Two, Chapter Six

**Part Two: Suspended  
****Chapter Six**

_June – July 1971_

It wasn't anything he wanted to remember, not from the moment he found himself pulled apart from the bulk of the young men around him and stood against a wall with about a dozen other guys. Compelled to silence, but they'd caught each other's eyes nervously before standing stiff and pretending to be brave. He'd counseled his heart against hoping that this meant some sort of reprieve, yet found himself wondering how far along Route 36 his family had traveled and estimating the amount of time it would take them to return for him if he somehow got cut loose from the military. Just about the time that he pictured his kin passing by the _Welcome to Hazzard_ sign, the yelling began.

His slimy civilian life was, apparently, over. He was one lucky maggot, however; he'd been selected, personally chosen, to become a Marine. Only men could become Marines, no, scratch that, in order to become a man he had to be a Marine first. He ought to be thanking his lucky stars. He ought to be moving already, didn't he see that bus out there at the curb, waiting for him? He'd better get on it now unless he suddenly wanted to find himself on his belly on the oil-stained cement, doing pushups.

It was late, so much so that the round, black clocks mounted high on the walls of the Federal Building were threatening to tick around to where it would be early all over again, and he'd spent hours showing parts of his body to the various hard-faced men stationed around the room. He hadn't much slept the night before and he'd had enough time standing here to daydream of getting sent back to his family thanks to suffering from some heretofore unrecognized medical malady.

He reckoned those were as good reasons as any for the way he reacted to getting screamed at. Well, there was also the fact that anyone who cringed in response to that kind of irrational hollering had clearly never found themselves in close quarters with one Daisy Duke when she'd been pushed too far and had a makeshift weapon in her hands. What was happening here wasn't anything close to frightening, though it was clearly meant to be.

But he'd been through the long years of high school from one end to the other, had faced down stuttering sheriffs and armed revenuers, and maybe most importantly, he'd played poker with Jesse and his clever cronies. He had something of an idea how to keep a straight face, even when all the world around him was absurd. His amusement got swallowed down, and with any luck it looked enough like the nervous gulps of some of the guys around him to pass for fear instead of mirth. The bus waited patiently, the screamer kept up his antics, and Luke marched forward into the steamy night air, then stepped up to find himself a seat where, thankfully, it was dark and quiet, and he slept.

Moments of peace, trending to hours of brightly-colored dreams of pursuit over switchback roads that climbed and dipped through the mountains, a repetitive, circular moonshine run right out in the daylight, foe and friend sprinkled liberally throughout. An accident just waiting to happen, and he crashed awake to learn, at high volume, that he was still one-hell-of-a-lucky-maggot to be here at Parris Island, South Carolina where he would be made into a Marine.

No, it wasn't an experience he liked to dwell on, not from those first bleary-eyed sunrise moments when he and his fellow inductees found themselves in line, backside to bellybutton. (Oh, the Staff Sergeants – particularly the runty one whose voice tried to menace because his body couldn't – used different words, the kind that Luke might have toyed with and tired of as a younger teen. Before he was old enough to know that salty language was the refuge of fools who thought it made them tougher than they really were. By the time he found himself on the concrete of Parris Island, standing on yellow-painted footprints and waiting to lose his hair and his identity, he knew better.) Didn't get better when he drew his first deep breath to find that the sweet scent of freshly turned earth was gone, replaced by something a lot more stale and dead-smelling. Wasn't improved by the feel of clippers running up the back of his head and the pile of hair that landed on his knees or the next line he got sent to, where he got issued gym clothes and a dress green uniform, and told to pack up all the remnants of his cushy civilian life, from jeans to jewelry, and send it home.

"You are, all of you little sweet peas, mine," Staff Sergeant Kauffman barked at them. "For the next ten weeks."

Which was just a fool's words, shouted louder than necessary, even if they did have to compete with a persistent roar that Luke would soon learn came from the ocean. Oh sure, there was the uniform, the absence of hair, the fact that the table that he ate at was in a mess hall instead of a kitchen in Hazzard, there was the crowding of men that were not his family and the relentless schedule of physical training, but none of that meant a whole lot. He didn't belong to Kauffman, a noisy hound of a man that bayed with only the slightest provocation, he didn't belong to O'Brien or Lewis or Garcia, the other Sergeants who tried with all their combined effort to make him miserable, and he sure as heck didn't belong to the Marine Corps, though he was getting told daily that he did. He belonged to the hills and rivers of Appalachia, the fast-driving, risk-taking, moonshining heritage of his blood, heck, he might even accept that he belonged to the law of Hazzard County, ought to be sitting in a jail cell right now. But mostly he belonged to a parcel of property, the old farmhouse that stood on it, and the family that had lived there since several generations before his own. He was a Duke, and he'd never forget it.

Not that Parris Island wasn't an interesting place, so different from the land upon which he'd been raised. Low lying, flat, only the rise and fall of the ocean to remind of the familiar hills of Georgia. A greater number of men here, mostly his own age, than could be found even if the law rousted everyone in the Tri-County region and corralled them all into the Hazzard Fairgrounds. And they were packed more tightly together than even the boarding houses at the center of Capitol City. Barracks in which they spent only enough time to sleep, mess hall where they had to move together as one long, sidestepping machine and wait for the permission of a Drill Instructor or Platoon Leader to sit down and eat. Sand everywhere on which they ran, marched, crawled, did squat thrusts and pushups, and which followed them home to the barracks in their shoes and the folds of their clothes.

And always the ocean endlessly moving around them, just as restless as the "scumbags" and "sweet peas" that ran through one strenuous drill after another for the entire day, and often well into the night.

Mostly he had no problems with the schedule or the demanding activity. He was a farm boy, used to rising whenever the needs of the livestock or crops demanded him to. The fact that he was barely permitted a few minutes here or there to dash off a letter home containing hardly enough words to announce his overall well-being (and to beg Daisy not to send him any treats, because he'd seen how poor Rasmussen, an all right newlywed with a sweet tooth that got indulged by his the missus back home, was forced to eat the candy she sent, wrapper and all, in front of the whole platoon), that part might have bugged him a bit, but he held his tongue. Kept quiet, stayed to himself, at least when the brass was around, got good scores on his fitness tests and target practice, and did whatever was asked of him. Thanked his maker (and, more than that, his guardian) that he had never taken up smoking, because the boys around him were going halfway crazy with desire for a cigarette, and would let the Staff Sergeants get the better of them for want of a puff here and there.

But he could manage all of it, could stop verbally referring to himself as _I_ or _me_, could live with the fact that the name _Luke_ got lost somewhere in the mountains between home and here. If the DIs required it of him, he could manage to refer to himself as _the private_ (class E-1 for now and up one pay scale when he reached the end of this particular phase of training, but it wouldn't matter, he'd still be the lowliest maggot, the scum on Staff Sergeant Lewis's boot heel) and shout his _sir-yes-sir_'s with as much gusto as the next guy. He could march through the night because Newsome, the dark eyed, moody guy from Ohio who'd been raised in foster homes after the death of his mother, had answered back and sassed Staff Sergeant O'Brien. He could take two-minute showers, just long enough to "shine his skull;" he could pretend to love his weapon (not gun, never gun – Sheehan had made that fatal mistake for them all, got the whole platoon subjected to a high volume lecture and an afternoon wasted to standing at attention while they thought about the finer points of the difference between the two words) more than anything, but it would never mean as much to him as one particular sixty-acre plot of land in a backwoods corner of a nearly broke and borderline-corrupt county in northern Georgia. He'd be a Marine if that was what the next few years entailed for him, but he'd never stop being a Duke.

Still the whole experience wasn't anything he wanted to recall too closely, especially not the part where Staff Sergeant Lewis took a powerful disliking to him. Didn't happen right away; for a few weeks he got left blissfully alone to go through the motions while special attention was given to those guys who lacked a farm-boy physique. But there was right and there was wrong, and when the DIs started consistently going after Sheehan, who was gangly, clumsy, easily winded, and all heart, it just rankled against the Duke boy's grain. The more effort the skinny blonde from Topeka put in to pleasing the brass, the more knocks he took, and as far as Luke was concerned it was no better than some of the things kids did to one another on the playground when no one was looking. Nothing he could deal with directly, not when he was supposed to stand at attention and not even flinch as Sheehan faced the assigned punishment of the day, but he could wait. For the privacy of darkness – the refuge of the moonshiner and clandestine athletic instructor – after they were supposed to be settled into their bunks for the pitifully small amount of sleep that the platoon was allowed. Hiding in a dusty, shadowed corner behind the barracks, showing Sheehan the finer points of doing squat thrusts without tangling himself up in his own long legs, when they got caught in the beam of a flashlight.

Laughter, mocking or sadistic, and Luke couldn't say it mattered which kind it was, not once his temper had gotten the better of him.

"What's the matter, ladies?" Lewis' voice boomed out of the glare. "You didn't get enough physical training during the day?"

"Sir, no sir!" Oh, he knew it was a bad answer, wrong in more ways than one. And it didn't matter that he heard Sheehan's meeker, but properly affirmative response, not when that flashlight slid off the skinny guy to his left to focus the whole of its shine on Luke.

"Duke," his superior officer had said, just that one syllable and no more, but it was enough. War had been declared, and that didn't bother the Hazzard-raised boy one bit. His whole life had been one sort of struggle or another; he hadn't been beaten yet.

Didn't take but seconds for the battle to begin, with Luke taking over the squat thrusts while Sheehan stood at attention. Then there was marching and some pushups and before any of the three of them noticed, the sky began to glow pink with the awakening of a new morning. But if Luke was beyond tired and a mite homesick by the time he got sent to join the rest of his platoon in their morning exercises, well, that was a secret best kept between him and the parade grounds. Running, target practice, obstacle courses, and his performance never told any tales about where he'd been the night before.

But Lewis didn't spend the day running them through drills, didn't get seen again until the chow line had reached its end and all the guys had been allowed to sit and eat the beef and potatoes. The meal wasn't the half of what Daisy or Jesse could cook up, but it wasn't bad and Private Duke had done more than his share of physical activity, so he ate well and quickly without much thought of anything more than filling his stomach.

Looking up, that was his mistake. Or maybe not, maybe all of his mistakes had already been made, because catching Lewis' eye wasn't precisely the disaster it should have been. Privates were meant to keep their eyes to themselves and never let their gaze fall directly onto a superior officer unless permission had been given first. Screaming and spittle in the face, hands shoving his back up against a pole while the rules got reiterated for a fool that would dare to break them, that's what should have happened next, but it didn't. A raised eyebrow from the Drill Instructor, little smirk there, and anything so gentle as a high-volume reprimand punctuated by getting pinned to a hard surface was forgotten. Luke was in as deep as he had ever been.

Days with the platoon, nights of punishment and just enough time in what he had learned to call his rack instead of his bed to keep him from complete exhaustion. Harvest without the crops, unending physical work, but so far it hadn't exceeded anything that farm life demanded of him on an annual basis, so he just kept at it. Let Lewis punish him without asking for any sort of reprieve or mercy, he just kept his Duke chin high and proud – even if all the rest of the guys, even Sheehan, were keeping their distance from him now, not wanting to get sucked into the vortex of the ongoing struggle between him and the Staff Sergeant.

It was nothing worse than school, at least that was what he told himself. Below the surface anyway, where it stopped mattering that he was in the lowlands instead of the mountains, that the voices delivering humiliating words were exclusively male, and that there was no safety of the Duke farm to retreat to. No harder to deal with than endless days of futile classes followed by evenings of chores then nights of deliveries, and no sleep before the cycle started again. Not to mention how he was haunted by his own advice to Bo about sticking it out to the end, taking refuge wherever he could, looking forward to a better future.

But it wore on him, doing nearly double what was expected of everyone else, watching Lewis smirk as he anticipated victory, listening to taunts and insults, all while holding onto the final fraying strands of his Duke pride. He got tired.

Exhausted, pushed past his tolerance the night he wound up on the soft sand of the beach doing squat thrusts as the tide came in. Sweat in his eyes, weapon in his hands, grit in his shoes and clothes and grinding into his knuckles because of the pushup in the middle of all the other movements. Not allowed to let his weapon get dirty or wet and the only way to protect it was to curl his fingers around it and keep it from ever touching the ground, even if the skin covering his knuckles got torn to shreds in the process.

Lewis shouting abuse about country boys raised to be lazy, suggestions of inbreeding and brain damage, and Luke could ignore all of that. It wasn't anything he hadn't heard before, from this man, from others, from big city folk and even some of the daddies of town-raised girls he'd dated. If it took all night, while the tide came in to lap at his boots and dampen the cuffs of his pants, he'd tune out the noise and discomfort in deference to his pride, but then Lewis stumbled onto a weakness he hadn't even realized he had.

"Keller," came the Staff Sergeant's unexpected shout, replacing all the insulting names Luke had been called in the days since this battle of the wills began. "Them's a little girl's pushups. You quit the squat thrusts and concentrate on them pushups until you get them right. Half-time, Keller."

It must've shown, how hearing his middle name used in this man's voice made him instantly ready to stand up to his full height, to forget pushups and squat thrusts and rank and the water sloshing in and back out at his feet, in deference to a fist fight. Or no, nothing so civilized, because if Luke let loose on the man in front of him, he was pretty sure he'd have Lewis eating sand before the Sergeant even knew what had hit him.

A fine idea, setting his temper and his fists free, except for the charges he'd face, his imminent conviction, the brig, and the absolute pleasure it would give his tormentor to see him give in to the temptation. So he set his jaw and started the slow-motion strength-training exercise he'd been ordered to engage in. But it was too late.

"Keller," came out just too snide, overly proud of itself. "Your momma give you that name?" Lucky guess, but Luke wasn't going to react, he wasn't going to give even the smallest hint about how deeply under his skin the man was working himself. "Figures," Lewis answered himself, carrying on a happy little monologue. "You momma ain't here, boy. Ain't nobody gonna coddle you and kiss you good night. Nope, you're mine until I say you ain't, so you just put thoughts of your momma right out of your head."

Fine advice, he really ought to take it. He couldn't swear he'd thought too hard about his mother since those first few years after she passed. Sure, he'd seen her photo anytime that one of his kin had pulled out those old photo albums that sat on the high shelf in the living room, he'd seen her name on his birth certificate, he'd remembered when her birthday was and the color of her hair, the smell of lilacs that surrounded her and the timbre of her voice, but he hadn't let his thoughts really settle on her in more years than he could remember.

"You just leave my mother out of it." See, now, that wasn't smart, and every part of him, from his wet feet to his sore shoulders to his torn up hands, knew it.

"Did you say something, private?"

He was a Duke, he wasn't allowed to lie even if it would be the smartest thing he could possibly do. So he bit his tongue and let his weight drop into another pushup.

"Private?" got hollered at him, and he knew he couldn't keep silent.

"Sir, yes, sir," grunted out, as his arms strained with the effort of lifting his weight one more time.

"I didn't hear you." Oh, but Lewis had. He'd heard more than he wanted to apparently.

But, "Sir, yes, sir," Luke hollered out all the same.

"Your momma," Lewis started in again, "didn't raise you right. Answering back like that. Your momma done a lousy job."

His weight dropped again, water splashing up as high as his knees this time, and if this little exercise didn't come to an end soon the waves would wash up and over him and his weapon, and he'd be up the rest of the night dismantling and cleaning it.

"Yep, your momma ought to be ashamed of herself." He hadn't told a one of the men here, friend or foe, about his family. About how his childhood had been both cursed and blessed and the fact that he had cousins but no siblings, an uncle but no parents. What he was experiencing now was just a series of lucky sucker punches, getting jabbed at him by a sadistic man. He wasn't going to respond, he wasn't going to give in, but, "Too bad she was out all night doing the town instead of staying home and raising you up right," was just too much to take. His knees dropped into the wet sand underneath them, his body tensing for the fight even before he could fully come out of his crouch.

"Ah!" Lewis hollered. "I wouldn't recommend it, boy. Best you get back to them pushups."

He tried, he did. Got his body back into position, braced above the sand with his weapon gingerly poised his fingertips, waves splashing ever higher on his pants. Dropped when he'd counted five, and forgot about everything. Let his face mash into the sand underneath it, let the water wash up over him, let tears well up in his eyes and his throat.

Victory sounding above him. Crowing tone and, "There you go," Lewis chirped over the sound of the ocean's waves rushing forward to take another shot at him.

Yeah. There he went.

* * *

Those days, stretching endlessly out to nowhere in particular only to come right back to this same lonely little corner of Appalachia, they weren't anything he enjoyed remembering.

He would have liked to have said they started rough and got worse, but he couldn't clearly define beginnings and endings, not when moonshine runs crashed unmercifully into morning chores before he'd managed to drop off to sleep. He would have liked to grouse about how much harder the work got without his strong male cousin at his side, but it didn't quite tally up that way. He would have liked to make the case that the farm was too much for three people to manage, but the evidence wasn't on his side. About all he could do was to face the fact that he was lonely here in the same tiny house that had always seemed a touch overcrowded, that the days were long and empty, and that some small part of him might be relieved when school started up again.

In truth, day simply followed on night, and there were never more than three nights of delivering per week anyway. He got plenty of sleep, especially since Luke wasn't there to steal his blankets or stick a spit-soaked thumb in his ear if he was too slow to rise. Chores were certainly not any easier than they ever had been, but they were no harder either. They might have seemed to take twice as long, but that was only because his uncle worked quietly at his side, accepting whatever pace Bo wanted to set instead of needling him about working faster, harder, keeping up and doing his share like Luke would have done. There was no one to laugh when the goats got under his feet, no one to push and shove against, each trying to be the first to make the other tramp into a mess that Maudine had strategically placed within perfect stepping range.

Seemed strange to want to rage against the calm that had settled on the old place and the fact that there was no one to smirk at him with superiority or point out that he lacked brains or brawn or whichever insult Luke's clever brain could come up with on any given day. Made him question his sanity how badly he wanted to holler about not having to compete, not getting laughed at for his ravenous appetite, for not having to beg for a ride into town whenever the confines of the farm got too small. But he did, he wanted to push and shove, to swing out and connect with something that would yelp, would yield for a second before it hit him back, would take and give pain in equal measure, but all he got was a pat on the arm as congratulations for a good day's work from the man who had raised him.

The afternoons were the worst, in the sweltering gap between planting and harvest, between one school year and the next. Time he should have spent lying next to Hazzard Pond, waiting for his fishing line to take off across the clear-glass surface in the mouth of something big enough to make for a decent meal, days that should have been filled with hikes or skinny dipping, or maybe just long drives to nowhere in particular. And there was nothing, as Daisy kept pointing out to him, keeping him from spending his summer the same way he always had. The mountains, the creeks and lakes, the dirt and stones and trees were all exactly where they'd always been, just waiting for him to run out into them with the same vitality that he always had. His girl cousin invited him out just about daily, to join her in town or at the quarry, anyplace where there were other kids wasting time while waiting for school to suck them into its doors again, but he wouldn't do it.

It wasn't Luke's fault that he was gone, or maybe it was. Bo never could quite reconcile himself to believing that his cousin had no options other than to let himself be inducted. And in truth it didn't much matter, because just like Luke wasn't here to waste summer afternoons alongside him, his cousin also wasn't here to absorb the punches that Bo wanted to dole out.

So the dog pen took the brunt of it. Late July heat burning against his skin, but indoors wasn't a lot better with its trapped humidity. Windless day and even the squirrels and chipmunks that normally dashed from one end of the farmyard to the other at the sight of a human seemed to be in a state of suspended animation, too hot to bother with being scared. Daisy might have been the smart one, running off to the air-conditioned stores of Capitol City, but he'd shrugged off the invitation to join her when it came. Jesse was checking his eyelids for pinpricks on the old porch swing by the time Bo found himself in the barn staring down his nemesis, the wood and barbed wire of a half-complete project. Constructed in the same sort of fits and starts as any of his and Luke's plans, built on the foundation of their on-again off-again dreams of breeding hunting hounds. Dogs to help them on hunts that they had no way to undertake, not now that Luke was gone.

The first echoing crack went unnoticed, maybe the second and third, too. It wasn't until somewhere around the time that Bo stopped chopping and switched over from the axe to the sledge hammer, smashing the remnants of the pen to splinters, that the hollering started up.

"What in tarnation! Bo!"

But it was too late, he'd already made a mess of things, he'd already swung so hard he'd halfway swear that his right shoulder was out of joint. The sledge was on the ground with the rest of the disaster he'd created and he was gripping his own elbow, right arm cradled across his chest by the time his uncle got around to calling him a fool.

It was just about right, similar to the words he wanted to hear, the snickering tone telling him he wasn't really hurt, the jibes about how he was just trying to slink out of doing his own share of the work around here. Close enough to make him turn around, to try to frame a clever response, but when his vision got around to comprehending the shape of the body, it wasn't his big cousin, just his uncle. The man who had raised him better than to answer back, better than to go smashing perfectly good wood into useless splinters. The man who was going to comfort him when he wanted a fight, who was going to pull him close when he wanted someone to push against.

"Boy," oh he was going to get scolded, that part was inevitable. But there would be no real edge to it, not when the man was already so close to him that he could smell the muskiness of hard work Jesse's skin, not when there were arms already around him. He was going to get cared about when what he really wanted was to get challenged to be stronger, faster, better. He was going to get his guardian instead of his co-conspirator, his sometime tormentor, his best friend. "What was you thinking?"

There was no way to answer that, and not only because his throat had tightened down against anything larger than a squeak. No his biggest challenge in giving Jesse the reasoning he was being asked for was that there had been none.

"Ain't doing you no good to be angry like this," came the consoling voice in his ear. "Nor to keep to yourself, neither. And it ain't like you." No, it was more like something Luke would do, and if he did, the man who had raised them both would have announced that everyone needed to give his older cousin time and space to work things out on his own. Bo, on the other hand, was to be followed around, taken care of, worried after. He'd like to complain about the double standard if only it didn't feel so good to let himself be comforted right now.

"Now," Jesse asked, holding him out at arm's length. "You really hurt?"

He shook his head and wiped at his eyes. The cramp in his shoulder had been nothing more than his body complaining of minor abuse. Sure, he'd have the tenderness of a pulled muscle for a day or two, but it was nothing that needed any particular medical attention.

"All right then." All the command had returned to the old man's voice, brooking no argument. "Clean up this mess, and once you're done I reckon you'd best go inside and write your cousin a letter."

As if he'd have the first idea what to say to Luke.

* * *

_August 1971_

Strangely, whatever the contention had been between himself and Staff Sergeant Lewis got washed away by the moonlit foam of that miserable night. He'd been sent off to take himself a long, warm shower that was in complete contrast to the two-minutes-to-shine-your-skull sort that was all he had been allowed since coming here. Sure, he'd had to clean and present his weapon for inspection, but after that he'd been sent to his rack and told to get a good night's sleep.

Oh, it didn't make boot camp all that much more fun to look back on, but it was only ten weeks, and more than half of them had passed by then. The rest of the guys in his platoon had silently welcomed him back into the fold, and if he'd been in Hazzard he might have harbored some small resentment that they'd abandoned him in the first place, but he understood it here. He'd picked a losing battle and predictably lost it; he reckoned it was enough that his peers accepted him back into the ranks at all.

Funny how everything and nothing could change all at once. Peace amongst men preparing for war, and Lewis must have figured that he'd earned the right to call one Private Duke "his," but Luke didn't belong to the man any more now than he had before. He was still a Hazzard boy, born and raised, and if he did a better job of keeping his pride in this fact to himself than he had before, that didn't exactly make him the Marine that Lewis wanted him to be.

"Duke." But it was a trade off. If he kept thoughts of family and home locked safely within his heart, his mother's memory could go untouched by the brutality of men like Lewis and Garcia, O'Brien and Kauffman. He'd be Duke, he'd be worm or maggot or even cupcake, so long as he didn't have to be Keller. "If I'd'a known what a lousy swimmer you was, I wouldn't have had to ride you so hard."

It was one of those truths that he hadn't ever really wanted to hear spoken out loud, though he reckoned it wasn't exactly news, either. Bullies, whether working slyly on a playground or sanctioned and paid by the Marines, had a habit of picking people apart until their weaknesses were laid bare and the tears began to flow. Lewis, at least, had been satisfied to get that far without pushing further, and now appeared to have developed a fondness for the wayward Private that he'd had it in for only last week.

Just as well, maybe, that he was panting too hard to refute his superior officer's assertion as to his swimming skills. Sure, he wasn't as fluid in the water as either of his cousins was, but he'd never been in danger of drowning. Then again, he hadn't ever plunged out of a helicopter into the ocean's current with a fifty pound pack on his back, either. And if, after the jump, he'd struggled to make his way to Lewis' rubber boat, he was pretty sure he hadn't been the worst swimmer here.

"It's a shame though." Luke tried to mop the hair out of his eyes, habit making his hand sweep up his forehead, but there was nothing there to push back, and if his eyes were cloudy it must just have been the salt water caught in his eyelashes. Funny, the Marines got rid of the hair that was largely inoffensive and left him with the little fringe that was currently in the way of him seeing clearly. "About your lousy swimming." See, now, Lewis was pushing it and if he kept it up they'd wind up out there on the parade grounds again tonight, engaged in another battle of the wills. And in truth, he had hit the water a little too hard, had knocked more than the breath out of himself, so he wasn't in a real hurry to go doing a few hundred pushups. "The way you barreled out of that bird like you wasn't scared of doing the jump, and as strong and smart as you are? I would've recommended Recon for your Mission Training Plan. But you got to swim to do Recon, boy."

Reconnaissance, well, he had only the sketchiest of ideas what it entailed. But that right there had sounded like a challenge to Luke, and he never had figured out how to walk away from one of those. So if he had to jump out of twenty helicopters and swim around the island and back to prove himself worthy of that particular MTP, he'd get right on that. As soon as he caught his breath.


	8. Part Two, Chapter Seven

**Chapter Seven**

_September 1971_

Somewhere past awkward and well nigh on toward making him wish he was still young and small enough to get away with hiding under the clothing racks – that was the discomfort he felt upon running into Summer at Rheubottoms. Funny to remember how many nights he'd spent looking at the back of her head, watching Luke's fingers tangle in the near-black curls there. Relegated to the rear seat of the old Falcon and he'd resented her, even as he'd turned his attentions to whichever girl he'd managed to convince to come along on the double date. For getting him demoted to the back of a car he usually had shotgun privileges in, for being the first steady girl in Luke's life, for no good reason, if he was honest with himself.

Now, although he was halfway embarrassed to see her, he reckoned he might have found the first person – outside of the too-tight constrictions of his equally saddened family – who was a comrade to the sorrow in his heart. Someone he could talk to who, just maybe, would understand without getting overly emotional or protective. But it hadn't worked that way. The girl had smiled and all but patted him on the head. She knew, of course, where Luke had gone and why, even if his cousin hadn't told her so himself. The county of Hazzard never had been content to let her rumors languish in dark corners or shady alleys, she had to be sure that they spread from the dusty outskirts where only moonshiners would hide, all the way to the brightness town square where they could be scrutinized in the glowing Georgia sunshine.

But, "Tell Luke I said hi," was the extent of commiserating with her, "next time you write to him."

And that part was none of her business anyway. Wasn't anyone's business, even if Jesse seemed to think otherwise. Stopping just short of sitting him down at the dining room table and commanding that he come up with something to say to Luke, as if it was no more than an assignment to write about the Georgia state tree (_the Live Oak, which provides plenty of shade under which to laze on a hot afternoon _– oh, but that brought thoughts of fishing and camping and even courting which he'd always done not only in the shadow of trees, but also that of his big cousin), when it was so much harder than that. To think of a single thing to say that wouldn't sound foolish to the man his cousin was off becoming, wouldn't smack of a silly kid left behind to wallow in his own misery. To figure out what his cousin would want to hear, whether he cared anymore about the two-yolk eggs or four leaf clovers that could be found on the farm, if he wanted to hear that delivering moonshine turned out not to be half as much fun as it had promised to be only six months ago.

No, it wasn't exactly anyone else's concern whether he put pen to paper or addressed an envelope to one Pvt. Lukas Duke, though plenty of townsfolk seemed to think it was. At the church and in square, from town hall to right here at the General Store, friends, neighbors and near-strangers asked him to pass on their well wishes to Hazzard's own military hero. (Who hadn't, as far Bo knew, done a single heroic thing, not before he left or since, and it was awfully funny how a moonshiner-plowboy-hick could become a town's favorite son just be getting called away.)

"Yes, ma'am," he sputtered out at Luke's old girlfriend anyway, even if he had no plans of scribbling anything more than it took to add his own name at the bottom of the letters that Daisy painstakingly wrote out every week. "You take care." And gave up, right then and there, on bothering to look for compatriots who might understand how he felt. A mishmash of emotions, and he supposed he wouldn't wish them on anyone else anyway.

He reckoned he ought to be off the hook now, what with frivolous writings like letters being forced to take a back seat to the homework he'd get assigned when school started tomorrow. He could perfectly legitimately answer anyone with questions about his corresponding habits that he didn't have time for that kind of a thing.

But school and early September also meant his oldest cousin's birthday was right around the corner, and while the family still couldn't send him sweets now that he was in Infantry Training instead of Basic Training, a care package to acknowledge his nineteenth year on the planet was acceptable. Bo might not have had the first idea what words to write down to Luke, but he knew what to get him for his birthday, and that was the only reason he'd ever find himself voluntarily doing anything close to shopping.

Not that he had to wander the aisles or anything – like Daisy always did, humming and wasting time staring at the prices printed on those little tags as though looking hard enough might make them go down, greeting all the other ladies from the county that were equally willing to spend the better part of a morning worrying over the cost of canned tomato paste – or even go any deeper into the store than the front counter. Standing next to the checkout and piling his arms high with the car magazines he didn't figure Luke could get up there on Parris Island, back issues for the two months he'd already missed, and his shopping was done.

Sure, there were those folks (like all the ones who kept suggesting he add their good wishes to his nonexistent letters to the new Marine) who would say it wasn't a fitting present. Even Daisy was likely to give their cousin something bright and shiny, new, soft and probably even nice-smelling. But anyone who would dare to say that Bo's present wasn't a good choice just plain didn't know Luke. Leastwise, not half as well as the boy with whom he'd shared a room for most of his life.

And there was nothing he wanted more than to give his missing cousin something that would make him smile and remind him of things he loved, like a good race on dirt roads and dreams of a future on the dirt track circuit. Because even though his temper still got the better of him sometimes when he want back over those same old thoughts that his clever cousin could have gotten out of being drafted and taken away from his home and family if he'd wanted to, he missed Luke like crazy and just wanted him back here in Hazzard. And if words had ever been his friends, if he could do justice to them in writing, maybe that's what he'd say in all those letters he'd never written.

* * *

It was night and day. Still nothing that he would say he enjoyed or could look back on with any pleasure, but it was one heck of a lot different.

Graduation from boot camp had been somewhere between funny and momentous, with Drill Instructors and Platoon Leaders alike hollering at them to keep their shoulders back, chests out and heads held high, because they'd earned the title Marine. And for a man that hadn't particularly wanted any part of it, had gone into the whole experience with the simple goal of surviving it, had internally declared to himself that a Duke was all he ever wanted to be, Luke was oddly proud to officially join the ranks of the Corps. Little curl at the corner of his lip forming all by itself at the sound of Lewis hollering about how he'd done a fine, fine job, and somehow or other it seemed that ten weeks of boot camp was a bigger accomplishment than four years of high school. Even if he didn't quite want it to be.

Of course, for all the pomp and circumstance that this graduation had included – from the way they marched into the theater, to the speeches of the DI's, and then there were the chants and finally the Marine Corps Hymn – it had been sorely lacking in post-event celebration. No Boar's Nest to sneak off to for the no-longer-lowly-worms-but-newly-commissioned-Marines, no parties held deep in the woods where only moonshiners would go, nothing like what he and his class of Hazzard High had done for themselves. No, he and his fellow former-maggots didn't have time for such things, not when the next morning had meant the beginning of Infantry Training Regiment for them all.

But it was dawn after the ten weeks of darkness they'd all gone through. A two-week crash course in weapons, learning to shoot everything from machine guns to howitzers, mortars to field guns, and then there was his favorite, the Armored Personnel Carrier. Dukes were born drivers after all, and nothing quite beat the feeling of terrain passing underneath the treads of a vehicle while a weapon fired overhead to clear the path of any enemies. Oh, he wouldn't want to fire live shells at the likes of Rosco Coltrane or Harvey Essex, but he reckoned if he could be allowed to tinker with the APC's weapon, he could get it to fire off long distance smoke bombs and other assorted non-lethal fireworks.

And if the target practice got frequently interrupted by classes where they sat in rows same as any school to which he'd ever been for the purpose of getting lectured by guys just as boring as any teacher had ever been, that was fine. Because here at Infantry Training, in exchange for good behavior, there was liberty.

Ten weeks of nothing but being run ragged and babysat, of no space to himself or time to put together two independent thoughts in a row, and suddenly he had hours at a time to fill as he pleased. At the enlisted officers' club, down in the gym sparring with punching bags, and when he got really lucky, off base all together.

Sweet Candy entered his life then, the sort of girl that Hazzard's soil didn't grow. Hair the color of sunshine, offset by dark, trusting eyes, a strong jawline, and that much might have described Bo. But what came south of that pointed little chin was all girl, lean and slender, curves where his kid cousin was all angles. _Dix_, she'd said her last name was, _you know, like the fort_. Made her laugh at her own joke, a sound as smoky as the mountains in whose shadow he'd been raised, with no trace of a little girl's giggle. He knew then, even before they got around to talking about it, that she could sing.

Luke had been at the forefront of the guys who'd snickered at Rasmussen throughout boot camp. Not yet twenty and the idiot had gone off and gotten married. Seemed a fool's choice to all of them, but the first time Luke kissed those perfect pink lips of Candy's, the first time he'd let his fingers run through the soft length of her hair, the first time she'd leaned into him on the tiny dance floor of the dive where he'd met her, he reckoned maybe his buddy back at base knew what he was doing when he got married. "She's the one," were the only words that Rasmussen had ever used to defend himself against their teasing.

Oh, there might have been some further mumblings, in chow line or as they stood in clumps waiting for their turn to be tortured in one way or another, about how old Rasmussen had figured out that he'd be gone for a few years at least, and with a ring on her finger, pretty little Amanda would be beholden to wait for him. Then there was the unspoken subtext of Rasmussen wanting something worth coming home to, some motivation to make it through everything that was bound to happen to him between here and his eventual discharge.

If Luke had smirked at the half-clumsy newlywed back then, he felt a mite guilty about that now. Because the minute those dark eyes captured his he felt his stomach twist in the kind of knot that no Hazzard girl had ever been able to tie it up into, and he could picture spending his whole life with Candy Dix. And that came before the second time they met, which, like any proper date, ended on her front porch. Except it was a boarding house, so her father wasn't inside just tempting him to see how far he could push a kiss before the pellet gun came out; no this porch wasn't the scene of a great Luke Duke conquest, but just a quiet couple sitting on the stairs and watching the stars come out. The third date never even made it off of her porch to begin with, and that was when she brought out a guitar. He played, she sang, and it was possible to forget for a few hours that the morning would bring him back to intense training for war. For hours at a time, there was only the wood of floorboards under his backside, the guitar vibrating in his hands, the fresh air and the moon looking over them as they sang together. And love, he was pretty sure there was love.

There was one other benefit earned with the tiny bit of rank he'd gained: telephone privileges. Just tinny voices at the end of a thin, coiled cord, only snatches moments because there was one phone to about every thirty guys, but after ten weeks of barely being able to scratch out a line or two to announce himself healthy and hardly skimming Daisy's newsy letters, hearing the voices of his family was enough to make the breath catch in his throat.

Jesse, his voice all puffed with pride, making a fuss over such a simple thing as a telephone call, Daisy squealing with genuine glee before telling him, all over again, every little bit of gossip and hearsay that Hazzard had to offer. One after another talking at high speed and then there was the telltale static of the phone being shoved from one hand to another, the receiver getting cradled in a palm. Shuffling sounds and muffled voices, and he was finally getting treated to exactly the same experience that any girl who had ever called the farm looking for him got – he was, heavy black phone and all, getting dragged into the privacy of a bedroom.

"Luke?" His own bedroom, to be specific.

"Hey, Bo." Strange to have a low-toned conversation with his normally louder-than-strictly-necessary cousin. Bo yelled when he was happy and hollered when he was hurt and whispered just about never.

"I miss you. And I wish you was here." It was—it would have been cruel to laugh, and if anyone ought to know that it was Luke. But the confession coming out in a rush like it did, and only after the bedroom door got safely closed between his cousin and any eavesdroppers (like their loquacious female cousin, for one), tickled him anyway. Not so much funny as cute, in the same way the boy had been ever since he was three.

"I know," he answered, and just like that, it was over. Any need for soft voices got lost, and he could just about picture the way the chord got stretched out straight as Bo lounged back on his bed. Jesse would lodge all manner of complaints later about how phones didn't grow on trees (but it was Hazzard, so you never could be too sure of such a thing) and if his foolhardy teenaged charges went and broke it with all their senseless shenanigans, there would be no replacing it. Lectures that would last half the night, and he reckoned he'd give just about anything to hear one right now, except that what Bo was saying to him was pretty interesting too.

"Football tryouts is next week. I expect I'll be a starter this year." Nothing wrong with that boy's ego. Luke could just about smell the sweat and hear the helmets banging off one another in the cooling autumn afternoons of home. "And I also reckon on taking EmmaLee Potts to the victory parties after…"

* * *

And if running into Summer in town had been awkward, it had also been instructive in its own way. A reminder of better times and how they got made. Girls, Luke's car, races, and he could understand now why his older cousin had been willing to turn over the driving on moonshine runs to him. Sure, there was a thrill in it, but that adrenalin alone wasn't enough. There were other important things.

And he could also see where Summer had fit into his cousin's life quite tidily. A steady girl so he knew he'd have a date on those nights when they weren't driving. No need to scramble each week for a new companion, not when he already had one that had been willing to come out with him over and over again.

Though Bo's early sights got set on EmmaLee Potts, they couldn't stay there. He also figured out, once he began his quest for a steady girl, why his cousin had chosen Summer. No father to put buckshot into his backside, no big brothers to pick fights with him in town, but more than that, no illusions. EmmaLee was an innocent little thing, as sweet of personality as she was of face, and would no doubt get to wondering uncomfortable things somewhere around the time of their second date. Such as why he couldn't take her out on Friday nights with the rest of the town's teenagers (or at least those who didn't do their delivering on weekends), and what his long-term intentions toward her might be. What he needed was a girl that would squeeze neatly into all the nooks and gaps of his current lifestyle, not one that would try to bend him into fitting with hers.

He could just about hear his cousin chuckling in his ear when he decided on pursuing Sally Jo Masters, but he hadn't lost the whole of his mind in selecting her. Sure, the fact that she was Daisy's friend presented a certain amount of risk, like a frying pan to the head if he broke her heart. But she was plenty cute, she was a cheerleader, and she already knew enough about his family to avoid asking all those awkward questions. She was neither nervous nor silly around him, she was just fun. A friend that seemed to like being kissed every bit as much as he liked kissing, and there wasn't a lot more that either of them intended to ask of each other anyway.

In those moments it seemed to be working out just fine for him to follow his oldest cousin's advice. Staying in school and behaving himself, because there weren't a whole heck of a lot of alternative options. Biding his time until he could figure out what to do with himself, watching time tick by for the two months until he turned seventeen. And, the way he saw it, when he got to that age, there'd be no one that could tell him that he wasn't a man and old enough to make his own decisions. Whatever they might turn out to be.


	9. Part Two, Chapter Eight

**Chapter Eight**

_October 1971_

"Come on, you bunch of pansies!" Well, it was slightly better than being called a maggot, he supposed. Pansies might not have been particularly useful, but they were pretty enough and caused no harm, unlike the other epithets of a more parasitic nature that he'd been called since coming here.

It wasn't exactly a sane line of thought to be tracking down, but it was a way to distract his brain from what was coming. The grunts around him didn't agree about exactly which part of this exercise was objectionable, but what they were doing right now, well, it only required strength. Portaging their rubber raft overhead at a running pace, and some of the guys might have preferred to drop it right here, but they'd be unburdening their arms soon enough. Half a mile to the water then a quarter, then the raft was coming down and there was nothing for it. Out into the water with the coxswain hollering out a breakneck pace for their oars to follow.

"We're idiots, you know," came mumbling from his port-side partner. Williams, the only guy from his boot camp platoon that had wound up with the same Mission Training Plan as him. Big, solid, dark of skin, hair and eye, and usually the man was relatively quiet. But Recon could bring out the complaints in an otherwise stoic man.

"Speak for yourself," Luke answered back, grim smile on his lips as he pulled his oar through the choppy water foaming around them. It was one of those days when the sea looked ominous and temperamental, swirling with malevolent intentions. "I'm just as smart as I ever was." Which wasn't saying much – his definition of fun was playing games of chicken with revenuers on narrow mountain passes where there were no guard rails.

"No, man," Williams mumbled, and one of the Smiths, the short one with a wide face, turned around to glare at them. This was very serious business that they were engaged in here, nothing that should be joked about, and Smith (plus the other, taller, green-eyed Smith) and most of the other guys here were intelligent enough to know it. Or experienced, anyway. There weren't a lot of guys here that were as green as Williams and him; most had been in the service for a while, and some had already done one tour over in 'Nam. Those were the scariest ones, the boys with tales longer than their arms, about stretched-out days and endless nights, and how boot camp was paradise compared to the jungle. The sort that made him and Williams stick close to one another, if only to try to drown out the sound of words that they were not ready to hear. "Listen," his friend went on, undeterred by the dark look from their fellow Marine. If it came down to the two of them in a secluded, dark alley and there was no such thing as rank or weapons, Williams could beat the tar out of one Smith with plenty left over to take out the other, and all ten of them in this raft knew it. "If we'd chosen to be grunts," which was the generic term for the infantrymen without a specialty in the use of one weapon or another, "it would have been just three weeks of Basic Infantry Training before leave instead of ten weeks here. We'd be out of here by now, man."

Which was a slight exaggeration, but not by much. Most of the guys they'd started out with would be starting their four weeks of home leave in the next few days.

"They'll get shipped out before us, too," Luke reminded his friend. "I reckon we made the right choice." He frequently tried to convince himself of that, and on most days he succeeded. His moonshiner instincts put him at the top of the class in both maritime and land navigation, made him a quick study at surveillance techniques and ground reconnaissance, and his radio communications skills, honed at midnight on the mountaintops of home, were top-notch. He was a natural born recon man until—

"One, two, three," the coxswain called, because they'd paddled out to the first buoy, which was the point of no return. All the combined weight of ten men leaning to starboard, and their raft flipped over, dumping them unceremoniously into the churning waters. It was a deliberate move, one that was prescribed for exactly this part of the course. Recovering the oars was the easy part or at least it was supposed to be, but somehow Luke gulped down some salt water during that process, choking and coughing, and that didn't make the next part any easier. Raft nothing more than a dead weight that wanted to pull the whole bunch of them out to sea with it, and they had to swim, one-armed, in-tandem, out to the second buoy, then back to shore with it in tow. Water slapping into his face with every stroke, blinding him and trying to make its way into his mouth again, and though he'd been told it was nothing more than a five-hundred yard swim, the kind of thing that the Platoon Leader's skinny kid-sister could manage, it still seemed like miles to him. And maybe it was, could be that for every stroke they swam, the tide took them out twice as far; if that was what was happening, he could be pretty well assured that it was his fault. There was no question that when it came to swimming he was the weak link.

But eventually the other nine made up for his uselessness and dragged the whole bunch of them back to the sand, where, breath sawing in and out of their lungs in uneven gasps, they found their feet and hefted the raft overhead again. Another five hundred yard run so the whole cycle could start itself again, then two more times after that before they could quit.

"Duke," Sergeant Timperio hollered. "You all right?"

If he'd had a free hand he would have used it to wave off any concerns regarding his general well-being, in an attempt to save his breath. But he had to do his part in keeping the raft aloft over their heads, and anyway, it seemed unlikely that his superior officer would accept a nonverbal response.

"Fine," he tried, and it came out breathy and tired. Not to mention that it broke military protocol. "Sir," he tacked onto the end, but it was already too late.

"Duke, fall out," got followed by groans from his squadron. After all, this right here was the part where he was actually useful. Take him out of the mix and the remaining nine had more weight that had to be distributed amongst themselves.

"Yes, sir," he answered anyway, dropping out of formation and trotting up to his superior officer. Stayed fully upright though there was the powerful temptation to bend at the waist and rest his palms on his knees until he caught his breath. But showing weakness would be the fastest way to get himself cut from Recon Training and sent back to become a grunt after all.

"Well, Private," the Sergeant drawled in his laconic Texas accent, "the way I see it, you ain't exactly fit to specialize in diving or amphibious assault." Eyes on the horizon, his commanding officer was watching the progress of other squadrons, even as he spoke to Luke.

"No, sir," he agreed, because it was more than obvious that the man was right.

"Rumor has it you've got a nice looking right hook, though." Interesting observation to come in the middle of what he was expecting to turn into a tirade about him being the weak link in his squadron. But it was a chance to catch his breath and a subject he didn't mind talking about.

"Yes, sir," he answered.

"Ever been a boxer?"

Well, he'd been in his share of fights, though he didn't reckon the Sergeant was looking for the details of his skill in barroom brawls, not when the nearly nightly Boar's Nest fisticuffs lacked even the most basic constraints of a ring or rules. Besides, no good could come of delving into anything like his home life here. If there was one thing he learned from Staff Sergeant Lewis back in boot camp, it was to keep the past separate from the now, to leave home exactly where it was so that no one he met and nothing he did could dirty his sunshine-perfect memories of Hazzard.

So, "No, sir," was all he said.

"We'll have to see what we can do about that."

"Yes, sir."

And just like that, the Sergeant's eyes came off the horizon to scrutinize him. Nice though this little interlude about his fighting prowess had been, it was over now, and he still couldn't swim half well enough to be a genuine asset to his squadron. He stiffened his spine, ready to hear what a poor specimen of a Marine he was. "I reckon you'd be best as a jumpmaster or scout, or both." Back to discussing what Private Duke, the Marine and future reconnaissance man, should specialize in.

"Yes, sir." Shoot, he'd be anything they asked of him if it would get him out of this particular exercise.

"Still got to pass the swimming test, though." So much for a reprieve, then. "Best thing you can do for yourself is to spend every free minute you got out here working on your basic water skills."

Bo would just about bust a gut laughing at him if he could see this particular predicament. Sentenced to swimming every day and it sure didn't seem like anything to complain about in the abstract, but he had no real interest in doing it. Not only because the ocean was a cruel master when it came to his swimming skills, but also because it would take away from what little time he got to spend with Candy. Time that would get even more scarce in future weeks when they spent some time up at Camp LeJeune honing their maritime navigating skills.

"Yes, sir," he answered anyway, because the alternative would be some form of punishment that he didn't even want to imagine.

"All right, Private, now catch your squad."

Sure, dismissed just in time to sprint up and join the rest of the men in the seconds before they were about to lower the raft into the waves for another go-round.

* * *

If his life were a movie and he could sit in a fold-down chair with a bucket of heavily-salted popcorn on his lap, a watery fountain drink in his hand and watch it pass by in brilliant color on a wide screen, he'd no doubt be marveling at how perfect it looked. Heck, he was a strapping, handsome leading man (though his family would snicker behind their hand at him if he said that out loud), he had himself an equally attractive and appropriately popular steady girl, and every Saturday he was the starting linebacker on the school's varsity football team. He looked good cruising around town in the Ford Falcon that he was starting to think of as his own, instead of a loaner car belonging to his big cousin, and his sunshine-dappled afternoons, lounging on the boulders surrounding the quarry pond, working on his tan and watching Sally Jo chat with the other cheerleaders while his peers on the football team took turns shoving each other and their girlfriends into the water – well it was the perfect sort of scene for a romance film, he reckoned. Sure did look pretty from the outside.

But living it, that was a different thing. Unasked questions itching all around him, day and night. The rumor mill, lazy like it was, did only about half a job. Stories started and left dangling to fall in whatever direction they might, and everyone knew the Duke family had shrunk by a quarter. Most folks had heard, one way or another, that the older boy had gone the armed forces, though the town's version whys and wherefores was about as easy to follow as dandelion seeds that had gotten scattered to the wind. Luke had been inducted, he'd volunteered, he'd been sent by Jesse to keep him safe from the law; he was in the Army, that was when he wasn't in the Air Force, the Coast Guard, then had been locked in the brig already for his wanton ways. He had run away from home, he was in Canada, he was already in Vietnam, he was a war hero and a casualty, missing in action and hiding out in his own barn all at the same time.

Bo could most certainly have straightened them out – the rumors and the tellers all at once – if only the questions would get asked of him, but they didn't. Besides, no one much seemed to want him butting into whispered conversations where facts would only get in the way of a good tale. All the same, he could swear he felt the impulse throbbing around him, the _is-it-really-true_ banging around in the minds of classmates and teachers alike, even if the words never got said.

"Graham," he hollered, and somehow it made the whole mess of his life come into focus. Out here on a Friday afternoon, no one shushed him, not even when his words were a bit rough. "When I get through with you, you're going to be eating dirt." And when the point came in the scrimmage where he had free access to Graham or Montgomery or Thompson, and their helmets popped off of one another before their shoulders came together, when the pushing and shoving started and didn't stop until someone's face got mashed into the ground, breathing in grass and soil and then rising again with a bloody nose, there'd be nothing but cheers for the activity. The football field, the one place where no one gave a damn if he had one cousin or two, or whether the Marines had snatched away one quarter of his family.

Except, of course, him. He cared that Luke was gone, noticed every morning that the bed next to his was empty (though he'd taken to storing his dirty clothes there, and if the bed took on a familiar sort of a rumple as a result, that was just a side bonus), felt each day pass without a single snicker or snide comment. The loss dug so deeply into him that if he was a bit too aggressive in his pursuit of a victory on the field, if the referee's whistle blew and the Choctaw Cheetahs' coach came off the bench to yell about illegal maneuvers on his part, if Graham stood back up out of the tackle and took a swipe at him, he felt no shame or guilt, and no real compulsion to be a good sport.

His own team intervened, more than once, to prevent brawls, to keep him from getting sent to the bench. He appreciated their efforts, he really did. Because if he got sat down and sidelined, he'd have no outlet for all the excess energy that he seemed to have developed in the months since Luke had been gone.

Besides, getting his aggressions out amongst guys in a game that they'd all agreed to play – no matter how much of a beating they took in the process – allowed him to smile and charm his way through the rest of life. Teachers weren't complaining about him (yet, anyway, the school year was still plenty young) and his uncle hadn't ordered him into the barn to face the strap in weeks. He even managed to kiss Sally Jo on the cheek and wish her well when she admitted to wanting to see other guys.

But after this particular football game, when he'd emerged from the locker room into the afternoon sunshine of the sidewalk on the west side of the school, carrying a duffel crammed with his dirt-covered and grass-stained uniform, his hair still wet from the shower, and a slight limp from where he'd landed knee first one too many times, there were guys waiting for him. Graham, Montgomery and Thompson, for starts, though it looked like Butler and Hunter were lingering in the background, too.

He greeted them with a grin, though he knew that their intentions were nothing like friendly, and dropped his duffel off to the side in preparation for what was to come. Three on one, the sort of dirty fight no Duke would instigate, but the odds evened up when some of the Hazzard cheerleaders went banging on the boys locker room door to roust Bo's teammates. By the time the coaches got around to pulling the brawlers apart with a combination of physical force and warnings about suspensions both from the team and school, it was a pretty even match. No real harm done as guy got pulled off of guy until the bottom of the pile was found to consist of one bruised and bloodied (and still mad enough to spit nails, or maybe teeth, if they had gotten loosened enough) Bo Duke. There was talk of taking him to the school nurse, Miss Noonan, who Bo was in no hurry to spend any time with since the woman wielded peroxide like a blunt weapon, applying it liberally and with brute force. There was mention of dragging him into town to see Doc Petticord. The notion of the principal's office got brought up, but in the end, he found himself sitting on the concrete of the sidewalk while Daisy, who appeared out of nowhere as far as he could tell, patted his face.

Her fierce, maternally protective growl at the boys and men around them, the angle of her eyebrows and flashing fury in her eyes drove everyone to a distance, and it seemed a mutual decision by coaches and players alike that no harm had been done and it was time to go home. Which left him alone with his female cousin by the back door of the boys' locker room, staring at his own bent knee where a hole had ripped in his jeans, and wiping blood and mucous away from his nose with the sleeve of his shirt.

"Bo Duke," was said entirely too loudly, and far closer to his ear than strictly necessary. "You just wait."

Wait, yeah, he could do that. He could sit right here with the cold from the concrete below him starting to numb his backside, could wait for the sun to drop lower until it dipped below the horizon and stopped blinding him, could wait a lifetime before going home to face his uncle and explain how he'd both started it and not, that he didn't deserve what he got and also didn't blame the guys who had done it to him.

Except he wasn't waiting for any of that, apparently. He was waiting for a tissue to get handed to him, and for another one to get applied with her firm hand to a point on his forehead in which he hadn't been aware of the pain until she started to clean it up for him.

"What am I going to do with you?" she muttered and he reckoned that as long as she didn't go pouring peroxide – or salt – into his wounds, she could do whatever she wanted. "I ain't sure what's gotten into you, cousin," or what had been taken from him, more likely, and she knew exactly what it was. "But you'd best be more careful."

He looked at her then, stared right into her eyes like he never much bothered to because she was always there. Maybe his intentions were to apologize and maybe they were to try to explain that he hadn't exactly meant for this fight to start. Didn't much matter, because when he got to looking at her, he could see things he'd been a fool to go looking for anywhere else.

"Don't," she chastised, and it was only then that he realized that he'd brought his arm up to wipe at his nose again. "You make any more of a mess out of that shirt, and I ain't going to wash it for you."

Too close for comfort, the girl had lived exactly the same life he had. Chores before school, prayers before meals, family before everything. Summer might have missed Luke, but if she did it was only as a girl who'd dated him for a few months. His cousin knew exactly how the family was hobbling along on three legs now, had to feel that same desire, itching and burning under her skin, to answer all those unasked questions that followed them through the hallways of school and the pavement of town. The girl in front of him, hair flying wild like it only ever seemed to do when the feral beast had been unleashed in her, understood the pain in his heart.

He didn't cry; Luke wouldn't have either, and it wasn't anything he wanted to do here in public anyway. But he did pull her into some semblance of a hug, the best they could manage in their crouched stances on an unforgiving sidewalk. Hand on her back and rubbing, and he heard a small sniffle in his ear and felt her muscles relax. For a minute only, then, "Bo Duke, if you get blood on my sweater," she threatened, and though her voice wobbled the slightest bit, that didn't make her any less dangerous.

He laughed, let her go, and started to push himself to a stand. Skinny little hand grabbing onto his forearm and hauling because his scrawny cousin was trying to help pull him upright.

"You reckon," he asked, bending to pick up his duffel bag. "You could see your way clear to washing my uniform? I ain't bled on it, and assuming I don't get suspended, I'm going to need it to be clean enough to play in next week."

She swatted him on the backside as they wandered off toward the parking lot and their cousin's old, blue Falcon parked at the far end.

* * *

One hit, just the one, then tottering, teetering, dark edges to his vision and he couldn't swear he knew up from down. No pain at first, just the sense that this could all be over, right here and now, if he wanted it to be.

But he didn't, so he shook his head, cleared the cobwebs enough that the shock wore off, and suddenly there was throbbing in his cheek, his jaw, his eye.

"Luke!" And there was another sense that got cleared – his hearing. Ought to be a good thing, useful toward keeping himself upright that much longer, except he hadn't much cared for the alarm in that voice. Fortunately it got followed by a high toned ringing, and after doing a quick check of his surroundings to be sure it hadn't just been in his head, he retreated.

"Duke!" Real, all of it was in living color, including the blood on the rag that Bailey used to wipe across his face.

A pat on his shoulder, and, "Here, drink," from the sweet-natured Private whose duty it was to look after his physical needs. Canteen to his lips, and he sipped. But behind Bailey there was still that other, more frustrated voice, trying to make him focus when all he really wanted was to rest.

"Duke!" again, and there was nothing charming, gentle, or worried about it. "You like getting hit in the face? That feel good?"

The question was just stupid enough to make him twist his neck as far as it would go, stiff though it was. No words, just a squint-eyed glare at Lieutenant Landis, one that ignored rank and silently asked if the man was crazy. Although, in truth, the Lieutenant might just have been the sanest officer Luke had met since his induction. The man had a uniquely clear-eyed focus when it came to battle, whether it took place on a field, or, like this particular one, in the boxing ring.

"Well then keep your left up!" Like that, right there. Obvious sort of logic about defense. "And keep your feet moving!"

Pealing sound of the bell, and before he could grit his teeth about the way it rang through his head, Bailey was shoving his mouthpiece back in between them. Up on his feet and back into the fight.

_Spend all your free time working on your swimming skills_, Sergeant Timperio had advised him, then the next day he'd been summoned to Headquarters where introductions had taken place. Lieutenant Landis, it turned out, had himself a certain little side duty that perfectly complemented his role in overseeing the training of hundreds of men: finding the ones that could favorably represent the Corps in inter-service boxing matches. Training included, and it was an offer Luke couldn't resist, even if he might should have.

"Luke!" came sailing over the sound of Marines and Navy seamen trying to out-holler each other, alternately supporting their own boxer and insulting the opponent. "Be careful!"

It was almost funny, might have been laughable if his mouth hadn't been full of rubber and his cheek hadn't gone halfway numb from that solid right hook that had connected with it. Except it wasn't, really, because that sweet voice didn't belong to Daisy, and he couldn't just dismiss it as being silly-female in nature.

So before he turned back to face Neville, the Navy bruiser that he was fighting in the Parris Island Exhibition, he met the wide eyes of Candy Dix, then mustered a wink for her. At least he thought it was a wink – being that he couldn't feel that side of his face too well, it might have been something closer to a grimace.

Should never have let the girl be here, even if she did insist it was what she wanted. There was no way to box without getting hurt at least a little bit, and Candy was just a bit too sweet, too gentle, raised a touch too sheltered, to accept that. Then again, she was his biggest supporter, had seen him through more growth than anyone save his immediate family. She'd whispered her faith into his ear the night before he'd been sent off for a two-week parachute jumping course in LeJeune, and celebrated his promotion to pay scale E-3 and rank of Lance Corporal when he returned. When evenings of singing on her porch petered out to a sort of sleepy quiet between them, she'd laid her head on his shoulder and listened to him ramble about the fine art of patrolling and surveillance, and had let him go on at length about how he'd always been a crack navigator, even if he had sort of skirted around the fact that it was his delivery of moonshine that made him so good at it. She was his biggest cheerleader as he struggled to master his swimming skills, and she loved to hear stories of the daily tortures through which he and his fellow Recon trainees were put. Cleaned up versions, that was, made less brutal for her ears.

But the way those beautiful eyes winced down and turned sad – at whatever the current damage was to his face as inflicted by the single blow from a boxing glove – announced as loudly as if she had hollered at the top of her smoky voice it that sweet Candy Dix was not ready to face whatever might happen to him on the battlefield.

Not that he was either. His thoughts rarely strayed further than the day's tasks, and considerations about whether the strength of his arms could overcome the rest of his body's lack of buoyancy when the time came to pass the swimming test at the end of Recon Training. Because if he could pass that test (and all the others, but he wasn't worried about most of them) he'd be through with his Mission Training Plan in two weeks, and then he'd get leave. If he failed there'd be a new Mission Training Plan for him, one that would keep him here for another three weeks.

Whichever way it ended up, he'd be getting a series of one-way tickets that led him ever further from Parris Island. And he could scrape together enough of his pay to put a ring on Candy's finger before he left. But first he had to stop staring down at her half-horrified face long enough to pound the tar out of his boxing opponent.


	10. Part Two, Chapter Nine

**Chapter Nine**

_November 1971_

No one had told him, and it was enough to make him angry, until he realized that no one had told Jesse or Daisy, either. Not, that was, until his uncle's ever-widening frame came lumbering out to find his niece and nephew in the midst of picking ears of corn on a Tuesday afternoon. For the first time since that year after Lavinia died, when the bursitis in Jesse's shoulder had been bad enough to warrant it, he and Daisy had been pulled out of school to help with harvest. During Thanksgiving week when it would mean only three missed days of classes and there wasn't a whole lot of teaching going on anyway. Seemed like some unspoken prayer had been answered when he got to trade in his desk for the fields. At least it had when he first got told about it last week, but by the time the old man came rushing out to them that Tuesday, Bo was thinking that maybe sitting down with a textbook propped open in front of him might feel pretty good. Just for an hour or two, and then he'd be content to come back out here.

But he was going to get a reprieve anyway, it seemed, a chance to rest his back and check over the nicks and splits left in his palms by the dried stalks, because Jesse had come to beckon them back to the house.

"Never you mind why," in that high-toned voice that tolerated no sassing was the only reason he and Daisy were given for the way in which they were being herded back to the house when there were still plenty of hours in the day and work to be done. Through the dried stalks and crossing the tree line, across what passed for a pasture and the thick chimney was there, same beacon it had ever been, to guide them to home, hearth and food.

And two figures on their porch. Making themselves at home, it seemed, so they couldn't be tax collectors or they'd be running from Uncle Jesse's squirrel gun instead of lounging lazily against the railing. Drinking—something, too far away for him to see more than the movement of hand to face, then head tipping back, but it couldn't been moonshine, not out in the open like that. All the same, something about the undefined and backlit shadows of the bodies felt familiar, smelled of wild nights and corn whiskey and—

His feet were running before his brain caught up, hurtling forward on instinct alone, because that up there was—

A trick, felt like. Sure, the one man gulping from a frosty glass was Cooter, hair sticking out in all directions and dirt smudges across most of his face. But that other one, well, it was Luke and it wasn't.

Felt stupid to slow his steps, to begin dragging his feet now that he was in the farmyard, to let himself be passed by Daisy, who must have figured it out only seconds after he did, and turned those ever-longer legs of hers free to sprint like a filly breaking through the gate. Seemed silly to look at her bolting up the steps, to watch strong arms open and wrap themselves around her, to study the rigidness of the body that held onto hers, familiar and wrong all at once. Stiff-standing, straight of spine, nothing at all like his casual cousin.

"Aw," Cooter moaned, and it made for a nice distraction, a reason for no one to notice just how slowly Bo's feet were now moving. "Daisy, I thought you was in a rush to hug me." The posture might have been all wrong, that lack of hair (and until now, Bo had refused to focus on that, because somehow the sight of his nearly-bald cousin made his stomach twist and his eyes sting) on his head might have given him the air of a stranger, but that blue-eyed glare that got leveled at their crude friend, that was all Luke Duke.

"Come on, boy," meant that he'd slowed so much that even his uncle had caught up, and that man's best running days were behind him.

"Hey, Bo," was Cooter making sure that no one missed how far behind his female cousin he'd fallen. "Look what the cat dragged in!"

Cat, his foot. "You knew he was coming," he accused the aging man that was hustling him along now, or maybe it was the grungy mechanic that was still eyeballing Daisy with a slightly suspicious amount of interest. Didn't matter, because by that time he was mounting the steps to where both his cousins stood – the one stepping back to make room for the rest of her family while the other offered his right hand.

"No he didn't," and if the body was wrong, the face all out of proportion without wild curls hiding half of it, the voice was Luke's. "Even I wasn't sure right up until I finished training, so's I didn't tell no one. Hey, Bo," came out quieter than the rest, whispered right into his ear, because what had looked like a handshake from afar had turned into a hug the minute he got close enough. "Caught a bus to Atlanta long before the birds was stirring, and tried to call Jesse for a ride when I got there." All of this came conducted through the hard shoulder that his face rested against, and even if the shirt there smelled of something other than the soap Daisy had used to clean their laundry for at least the last five years, there was no question that this was Luke, letting him hold on until he was ready to let go. Which was not quite yet, not when it meant he'd wind up with a close-up look at the farmboy-turned-Marine. "But didn't get no answer, so I called Cooter."

Bo pushed himself upright then, turning quickly away from Luke to catch his uncle's eye.

"I really didn't know he was coming," Jesse confirmed, though it still seemed suspicious to Bo that their guardian had taken leave of the field and his kids not a half hour ago, on some sort of an errand in the house. "But there I was, bagging the corn," in burlap, because what Dukes grew wasn't for the eating, but to be stored and fermented in their barn before it got dragged off into the woods. And in truth, Jesse would never lie, so he hadn't known Luke was coming, hadn't been given any prior knowledge that Bo would be standing here now with the familiar weight of his cousin's arm across his shoulders, feeling just as natural there as the air in his lugs. "When that hooligan," pointing to Cooter, who grinned as if the epithet was a joke, oh, but it wasn't. Their uncle frequently pointed out how much maturing that Davenport boy had yet to do. "Came up the drive, horn blaring all the way." Then the scolding got softened with a, "Thank you, Cooter."

"No problemo, Uncle Jesse," only made the old man's teeth grit down, but the lecture on manners and exactly whose uncle Jesse wasn't got bitten back.

A glass of lemonade was getting shoved into his hand; so that was what Luke and Cooter had been drinking. Pitcher was empty now, the last cupful getting handed over to him by Daisy, who was also sipping at a glass of her own. Funny how they only kept enough food and drink in the house for three now, and what was meant to be refreshment for dinner was already gone by mid-afternoon.

"How long can you stay, boy?" Any lingering doubt that their patriarch had known, and kept from him, that Luke was coming home disappeared with that question.

"It's a thirty day leave." Jesse's smile was the sun emerging after a week of storms. "Looks like I got here just in time to help y'all with harvest, too," Luke added, the warmth of his arm finally leaving where it had been draped across Bo's shoulders. "I figured y'all would be done with it by now—"

Affronted, that was the look on the old man's face, and Bo couldn't quite say he blamed him. He never did take kindly to anyone, family or foe, second-guessing his farming practices. "Now boy, you just think again." Well, just like old times. Luke was about to get a lecture. Bo put down his now empty glass and turned his attention to the upcoming battle of wills. "You ain't doing a lick of work; you're a guest."

"What? Jesse—"

"Sit!" the old man growled, and if it wasn't logical, if there was no place for Luke to put his hind end, not when Daisy and Cooter had taken the porch swing for themselves, it didn't matter one bit. "And spend some time here with your friend." Who was looking a mite uncomfortable over there, halfway hiding behind Daisy and waiting for Jesse's steam to run out. Sure, Cooter liked to act brave, but this right here was where the pedal hit the metal, and there weren't many who could face down Jesse Duke. "Boy, don't you sass me." Except Luke.

"Sir, yes sir." Now that was strange. Luke rarely remembered to call Jesse 'sir' in the first place, and there wasn't anything in the patriarch's demeanor that would necessitate him doing it double.

Pleased as punch, that was the look on Jesse's face. "Now Daisy there, you just go inside and start working on a fine dinner. Cooter, you're invited."

"Well, now, Uncle Jesse," their slovenly friend tried, but he was a fool to think he could get out of it.

"I ain't about to hear no arguing."

"Yes, sir." And in truth, the Davenport boy could do with a nutritious supper every now and then. As far as Bo knew, most of his meals were of the liquid variety.

"Now me and Bo's going back out there to finish up what him and Daisy started. We ain't going to be gone for more than a couple of hours. And when we get back, we's just going to light us a fire and have us some nice vittles."

Weird that he had no inclination to argue or complain that it wasn't fair that he had to go back out into the fields when no one else did, that Daisy and Cooter were going to get to spend time with Luke while he had to work. Should have been automatic, but in truth he needed a little time and distance to adjust his mind to this man with arms that felt like Luke's, but were sleeved in some sort of olive-green cotton overshirt instead of the blue flannel that his cousin preferred, with a voice that sounded familiar, but said the wrong things. And then there was that skull, shining through the too-short hair, and the clink and jingle that Bo couldn't place until he saw the chain hanging down from his cousin's neck. Dog tags, and without even a second to think about it, he hated them. Illogically, irrevocably hated them.

Cool air, fresh against his face and it felt good while he worked, like a damp cloth when he was fevered. A little privacy, because Jesse was at the other end of the row, and he could think, could give himself half a chance to work out why it all felt like a cruel trick. Luke coming home unexpectedly and staying for a whole month ought to be good, even if his spine was a bit too rigid. By the time he'd been out in the corn for fifteen minutes, he couldn't say he was sorry when he spotted old Luke, still hairless, but dressed in jeans and flannel now, blatantly disregarding their uncle's orders and loping out into the fields. And when he took his place next to Bo those hands pulled corn off the stalk just as deftly as they ever had, while both he and Jesse pretended that Luke hadn't gone off and been deliberately disobedient.

— — — — — — — —

Still, it took a few days before Bo got his cousin back. Thanksgiving, with its frozen turkey instead of a freshly hunted one, was a stiff and formal affair. Maybe it always had been, with the ritual of prayer followed by each of them listing off things to be thankful for, then the too-much food, all of which had to be eaten, even the sweet potatoes that he had never cared for and sure wasn't about to start liking now. Church in the afternoon, sitting in starched clothes through the annual rendition of _We Gather Together_ sung slightly off-key because the deacon had a tin ear, then back home to change and take care of chores before they sat their logy selves in front of the fire and waited for Jesse to pull out the old photo album and reminisce about Thanksgivings past.

But Friday's frosted-over windows at dawn brought a changed feeling to the air, one of urgency to finish their work before winter could sneak up on them. So when they dressed in the morning, there were long johns and denim jackets pulled out of the closet, and somewhere in the process of dressing Luke took off his dog tags and left them, untouched, on the dresser between the pair of twin beds until he'd need them again in a month or so. Or untouched by his own hands anyway. Bo found himself picking them up the minute his cousin wandered down the hall to the bathroom, wishing he could get away with hiding them in the drawer or under his mattress. DUKE, L. K., his cousin had been reduced to. A NEG, followed by his social security number, and it was funny how almost all the characters of a man's name could be dropped and it didn't matter, but the number that the government used to identify him, that had to be listed in its entirety. Followed by USMC, the initials of the service that had taken Luke from him, and now was only loaning him back for a month. L came after that, who knew what that was for, then METHODIST. Luke's whole self, reduced to five lines, stamped into metal. He hastily dropped the tags when he heard footsteps heading back from the bathroom; it was his turn to go in there and get ready for the day anyway.

Which turned out, once the tags had come off his cousin and the work clothes had been put on, to be a harvest day like any other harvest day. At the end of which he came home exhausted, one arm draped across Luke's shoulders, smiling to know that he'd get some rest now and that his cousin would be in the bed next to his when he woke up come the following dawn.

* * *

Even leave, a whole month of holidays, wasn't anything he wanted to go remembering in any detail. There were plenty of good parts: mornings starting with too-hot showers even if the rusted old water heater in the kitchen never could manage to heat anything above what he would have called tepid before the ice-water of boot camp, pre-dawns sitting on the porch listening to the wind catch in dry leaves instead of moaning endlessly over the ocean only to slap into the flat sides of the barracks, steaming coffee silently delivered by his uncle, who would sometimes linger beside him for a few minutes. The smell of land and animals instead of the sea, the yellow glow of the overhead light in the kitchen behind him welcoming him back into its warmth once he'd had his fill of fresh air. Waking Bo by stealing his blankets was as much fun as it had ever been, watching that face screw up to complain at him, looking at sunshine-blonde hair falling into the teen's eyes, the pout of young lips. The hand reaching out for the warmth that had been stolen from him, getting handed jeans instead, and he'd put them on as a matter of habit before coming in search of some sort of revenge for how he'd been so rudely interrupted in the middle of blissful dreams of dates with pretty girls. A wrestling match turned hug and then there was breakfast.

Daisy playing grown up, serving a hearty meal like their aunt used to, but the girl had no idea how young she still was, how much baby-fat still clung to her cheeks, even if there was none anywhere else on her frame. Grin sweeter than the molasses in the middle of the table, but just as apt to cause a sticky mess that would take more than one bath to clean up. Bo hunkering over the meal with his eyes still half-closed, oozing youth from every pore like the pimple on the left side of his nose, but he was growing. Almost as tall as Luke now, and showing no signs of stopping anytime soon, at least not as long as he inhaled anything unlucky enough to find its way onto his plate. Jesse sitting back and surveying the three of them with a satisfied little smile and it was the kind of perfection that would fit tidily into a fairy tale, the exact sort of thing that the big bad wolf could never leave unmolested.

When the sun made its way far enough over the Blue Ridge that a man could see not to trip in the divots of the land, and the fog hung close and thick, lending his home the nostalgia of a sepia photograph scarred with age, they'd set out for the fields, where the work that once felt heavy and tiresome went quickly. His hands, toughened by hours of being ground into the sand or gripped around coarse-woven ropes while he hung suspended from the skid of a helicopter, never even felt the slices left there by dried corn stalks, and his legs, used to marching through the night after hiking through the day, could stand in the ruts of a cornfield for weeks without tiring. It was almost a shame when the harvest got done even before Sunday service, and after a lazy day of rest, his cousins had to go back to school. Bo's protests, though they might as easily have come out of a cranky four-year-old, seemed perfectly reasonable to Luke. Idle time might once have seemed like some sort of paradise, but by now Luke had no idea what to do with it. So he took endless runs to nowhere, feeling the firm soil of the Georgia hills under his boots, he patrolled the borders of the Duke property though he knew he'd find no signs of a genuine enemy there. He pulled chin-ups on low branches of oak and maple, he tracked coon and possum and wished, once or twice, that he'd thought to bring some sort of weapon in case he stumbled onto a deer. And by Tuesday, Uncle Jesse was shaking his head at him.

"Come on up to the still with me," so he did, but watching moonshine slowly cook its way out of fermented corn required more stillness than his finely honed body could tolerate. On Wednesday he discovered the empty space where there had been that poor excuse for a dog pen, and his uncle said they'd burned the wood from it in early season fires. Made him think that he'd best set to chopping up any dead logs he could find on the property, but when he looked there was plenty of firewood stored there already. Wound up digging up roofing nails and a ladder; he couldn't swear that anything needed tacking down, but being up that high usually gave a man perspective anyway.

Evenings, no matter how he'd managed to fill the daylight hours, always found him home in time for dinner, then helping with evening chores. Suggestions from Bo about night races got dismissed in deference to homework and smoldering-eyed glares, but the boy needed to keep his grades up if he wanted to be on athletic teams. Besides, thanks to Luke's absence from the farm, his younger cousins had missed a few days of school already and they were likely to miss more come planting time. Best they kept on top of their work now.

Saturday featured Bo stepping out onto the porch with him and dropping a baseball cap into his lap. "Now you ain't got to be embarrassed to go into town."

His hair, or lack of it, was apparently getting the blame for the quiet, homebound evenings of the past week. It was an interesting theory, one that made perfect sense to the high school kid that his cousin still was, and six months ago it would have made sense to Luke, too. Now his thoughts on the subject were as murky as Hazzard Pond in springtime. The service hadn't been his first choice of how he wanted to spend these years of his life, but surviving boot camp and Infantry Training, then going through Recon Training, those things gave a man pride. And strength, physical and mental toughness, heightened skills. He could shoot any weapon placed in his hands and be reasonably sure of hitting his target, he could run long distances over varied terrain, and heck, he could even swim passably with a fifty pound pack on his back. Maybe his hair was a worthwhile trade for all of that.

But the baseball cap wasn't a bad idea if they were going to spend the morning at the garage. There was no hiding the fact of his military haircut from friends like Dobro and Brody, but he reckoned it would be for the best if they didn't dwell too long or laugh too much about it. There was only so much of a good sport he could bring himself to be.

Running into Summer on the Square wasn't anything he'd planned for, but it wasn't so bad. She kissed his cheek and wished him well, talking the same as she ever had about how she'd be moving on in a month or two. Smiled and took her leave, and if his heart panged, it wasn't for her. He'd done all right by Summer, he'd ended things between them without ever misleading her. It was Candy Dix that he'd disappeared on, without declaration of intent one way or the other, without even so much as a goodbye. It was for the best, the girl's heart was too soft to be dating the warrior he was about to become anyway. He kept telling himself that, just like he kept swearing up and down that his family would be fine without him.

Brody, when they made it to the garage, didn't even bother to comment on where he'd been or what he looked like, just shook his hand and said he was proud to know a man like Luke. And if that wasn't awkward enough, anyone who walked by or came in announced how glad they were to see him and wished him good health like they never would have a year ago. A few even went so far as to call him heroic, and he was wishing Dobro would show up, point at his nearly-bald head and laugh. That, though obnoxious, would at least be a genuine response, not like all these folks who suddenly found him so very interesting.

A look in Bo's direction was all it took.

"You ready to go?" his cousin asked, which either meant that their brains were as in-tune as they ever had been or that he wasn't the only one who was tired of all the attention he was getting. Or both.

Didn't matter. "You bet," he answered and headed toward the Falcon that was as much Bo's as it was his by now.


	11. Part Two, Chapter Ten

**Chapter Ten**

_December 1971_

He was a fool that had fretted a week away. Though it had seemed justified at the time; there was a lot to fret about and no one else in his family seemed to be doing any of the fretting, so it all fell onto his shoulders. And his oldest cousin always swore that he didn't do his share of the work around here.

But when he got past worrying over Luke's unexpected arrival, his military appearance, his dog tags, his posture, his hair, his voice, and his too-early rising, it was time to go back to wasting days in school when there were better things he and his cousin could be doing, there were evenings which should have been free time, but got lost to homework, there were friends to spend an hour or two with and races to be won. There was a whole town they could go out and conquer and… then Saturday went and proved he'd been fretting his life away when all he needed, really, was to spend time with Luke.

One week, pouted through until it was passed, and now there were only three left. A thirty day leave, which meant that two days before Christmas, Luke would be gone.

"So we'll celebrate on the twenty-second," Jesse had announced, as if the rest of the world were fools for waiting until the twenty-fifth. Luke had smiled at that, lopsided thing that couldn't make up its mind between happy and miserable, but Bo didn't have that same conflict. Moving their celebration of the holiday wouldn't do a damned thing to make it any better that Luke had to leave again.

"Just," his cousin had croaked out, and it sounded like he had a cold, though there hadn't been a single sniffle or cough over the past few days, "don't get me nothing. No presents, because I can't take nothing with me anyway." It had been an awful little request, but—

"Christmas ain't about the presents, anyway," had put a stop to any further discussion, coming out in Jesse's affronted and annoyed voice like it did. "We'll just have us a quiet little family celebration."

Tidy solution, perfect answer if you were a saint, but Bo wasn't and he knew that neither of his cousins was either. Christmas wasn't about presents, it was about excitement, it was about not being able to sleep while he and Luke whispered across their room and wondered what the morning might bring; it was about getting told to hush and just go to sleep now, then sliding out of his own bed and into Luke's so their whispers couldn't be heard beyond the covers that got pulled up over their heads. It was about finally falling into a light sleep, cuddled together and too hot, it was about waking up to Luke pretending to care about chores. It was about his so-cool cousin leading him out to the barn so their whispered conversations could resume where they had left off in the dark of their bedroom, it was about feeding livestock, collecting eggs and milking goats in sloppy record time, then hustling back in to find a smirking Jesse and a mussed-haired Lavinia greeting them with admonishments about how they had better just sit down and eat a good breakfast before they even thought about doing anything else. It was about him and Daisy trying to peek around the edges of the kitchen table to see snatches of color in the living room, it was about Luke acting like he was blocking their view but his own eyes would be fastened on the far side of the archway, too.

The presents would get dived into, opened, and played with for a few minutes before the yawning started up.

"Back to bed with you," Aunt Lavinia would say, because the visiting would begin in a few hours. Some folks stayed home and others roamed from house to house, greeting families they'd known forever, wishing them the best of blessings. It was an unchoreographed mess that somehow or other ended up all right anyway. But before the three Duke kids would be fresh-faced enough to tolerate lipstick-tacky kisses on their cheeks, and bony hands ruffling their hair, they'd need some honest sleep. And if they were really lucky, they'd all three get tucked into Jesse and Lavinia's bed while their guardians went about the business of tidying up the mess that their morning had left behind.

Christmas wasn't about the gifts, it was about excitement and closeness, facilitated by wondering what the day would bring. There would be no wonder in the celebration that his family was planning for this year, no innocence. Sure, he'd muster a grin for it just like every other member of the household would; they'd all pretend to be enjoying themselves for the sake of the others. But there was no way that he'd simply accept the 'no presents' rule. There had to be something he could give Luke.

His cousin's present wasn't going to be, he quickly figured out, a fun and lively moonshine delivery. Good times, those hours spent in Tilly's front seat, hiding in plain sight while it seemed that half the world was out to get them. The yearning to drive, to experience that adrenalin rush from behind the wheel, felt terribly far in his past now. His best memories were of sitting in the passenger seat, clinging to the window frame while wind gusted through his hair and into his mouth, gaping wide with laughter as Luke tricked old Harvey Essex into driving those federal wheels of his right into the thick mud of the swamp. The ground would burp under the weight of the revenuer's car, then there'd be the mad scramble as Harvey pulled himself out to safety, but by that time Luke had the pedal to the floor again, and the darkness would pull them in and cradle them safely in her arms.

Bo had won the right to drive on moonshine runs, and his cousin wasn't in any mood to yank that privilege back from him. Besides Harvey and even good old Rosco Coltrane apparently suffered rheumatism in the chill of December, or simply considered themselves deserving of a month off, because he couldn't for the life of him scare up a tail on any of the moonshine runs where Luke accompanied him.

A race wasn't much of a gift, but his cousin did accept that much, though Bo reckoned he had to credit Dobro with an assist. Friday afternoon and some unrefined mixture of boredom and habit sent two Duke boys angling toward town in a souped-up Ford Falcon. No clear plan, but the garage was there, glowing yellow in the last light of day. Seemed as attractive a destination as any, though it got quite a bit uglier upon closer inspection. Because there were the mugs of some of the guys they'd grown up with, guys that, aside from Cooter, had all but disappeared from Bo's life about the same time that Luke had. Hard to assign blame in that one, so he didn't. Chose not to worry too hard over whether it was because he'd hunkered down to his own world or if it was because these guys were more Luke's friends than his own, chose instead to lose himself to the bickering and banter of the evening.

That started right out with Dobro Doolan pointing at Luke's near-hairless head and laughing. "You are one funny-looking cuss," came rattling out his mouth faster than a runaway freight train.

There was no thought behind the way Bo's shoulders tensed and his fingers curled, his right hand coming up with intent to poke a finger into that smart-mouthed, know-it-all's breastbone and demand apologies or respect. Mouth dry, chin up, and Bo was setting his feet, getting ready to—

And Luke laughed. "Leastways I can blame it on a bad haircut. What's your excuse?"

Cool, unflappable, and maybe the oldest of the Duke cousins had always been that. But he had a temper too, and Bo really would have figured it would rear its ugly head here, yet it didn't. Ripped the rug right out from under Bo's righteous anger and left him a gape-mouthed fool whose fist had no good place to plant itself. Though Dobro appeared ready to accommodate him, sitting up straight from where he'd been leaning awkwardly against the windshield of his Mustang.

"Cool it," Brody mumbled, to no one and everyone at once, and it was over before it could get started.

For all of a few seconds, anyway.

"Hey, Lukas, Bo," was Cooter, throwing gas on a brush fire while locking the sliding doors of his garage for the night. "You boys come to race?"

Maybe they had and maybe they hadn't, but Dobro didn't wait for them to make their intentions known.

"Shoot, soldier-boy there probably don't remember how to drive, he's been so busy playing G.I. Joe." Taunting, same as it ever had been, except it wasn't. Hard to say what had changed, whether it was the squint in their friend's eye that held a little more malice than bravado, or Bo's sudden awareness that not everyone would treat his cousin's military service with respect. Made him want to level a few accusations at the brat in front of them about how, exactly, he had escaped the draft and whether he could have survived boot camp if he'd been sent. Skinny, scrawny mess of a jackass and—

"Don't you worry," delivered just as calmly as it ever had been, and Bo didn't understand how Luke could do it. Could take what amounted to insults over things that weren't his fault, things that he was handling with more grace than any of the rest of the guys here were capable of. "I can still leave pieces of your car trailing from here right on down to the swamp."

"Care to back that up?" Dobro, just this side of a sneer now, jingling keys in his hand.

"You reckon you're man enough?"

And the race was on.

Not yet out of town, and already Dobro was ramming on their bumper. Slight twist of the wheel and the Dukes were out of the line of fire, picking up speed to run parallel to Cooter in his hot little Challenger, leaving nothing but exhaust for their other two friends to ram into. Laughing and hollering insults to the mechanic through their open windows, when the bump from behind came again. Slight swivel in his seat and he glanced out the back window to see the Mustang coming in for another shot at Luke's bumper.

"Dang it, Luke! Why are you letting him do that?" Not even sure what he meant by that, whether it was the bumper tag now or the snotty attitude that his cousin had just about ignored a few minutes ago.

"He ain't hurting me none," came his answer but Bo didn't like it, not one bit. He was still turned around on his seat, trying to think of some way to give Dobro his comeuppance when Luke started talking again. "Bo, you really reckon that pretty little car of his can take all that banging? He's making a mess out of his own front end. If he wants to leave a few dings in my bumper in the process, well, they ain't nothing we can't bang out tomorrow."

Perfectly sound logic, the only kind Luke ever came out with. But it included a touch of generosity, and more magnanimity than Bo reckoned he'd be capable of under the same circumstances.

"Besides," and there was a naughty little grin teasing at the corners of his cousin's mouth, "he's going to wind up in that ditch up there." The Falcon veered left then back to the right, making Cooter reflexively crank his own wheel out of a desire not to get himself sideswiped. "Right," but Luke had got no interest in harming Cooter; his eyes were fastened to the rearview as he swerved again. Cooter was a mess of compensation over there to their right, his eyes popping wide even as his mouth muttered something unflattering on the subject of Luke's driving. "About," another quick crank of the wheel and the mechanic next to them, tired of this crazy carnival ride, slammed on his brakes. Screeching skid and the Challenger stayed on the pavement, even if it did end up sideways, straddling the yellow line and hogging the whole road behind the Dukes. "Now," Luke finished, as Dobro stood on his own brakes and, with nowhere else to go, slammed his car directly into the ditch that lined the side of the road. Behind that, Brody also screamed to a halt, and while their three friends figured out getting their cars disentangled and back onto the road, the Duke boys disappeared into the darkness. "That was a fine piece of driving," Luke informed them over the CB. "We're gone."

It was a good present, nontraditional, and his cousin didn't even know he'd received it, but there was that smile across Luke's face that was undeniable. A few minutes of fun and that might have been about all his cousin would accept by way of Christmas gifts this year. But it wasn't enough, wasn't the half of what Bo wanted him to leave here with.

* * *

It was a heart – no, more than that, it was Bo's heart, halfway broken – placed in his hands for repair. Took him awhile to recognize it, busy as he had been in trying to navigate the trappings of Hazzard. Home, where he'd never had to think twice about his demeanor or behavior. Sure, he'd gotten plenty of lectures and licks for the things he'd done as a kid, but both the infractions and their consequences had flowed through his life just as like the Hatchapee River flowed across the land itself. Now he had to think twice about the hair on his head, the clothes on his back, the heaviness of his footfalls, the rigidity of his posture, the tone of his voice. Had to learn, all over again, to accept the kindness of a gentle touch, thoughtful words, and the admiration of his younger cousins.

Hazzard always had ticked to its own sense of time. Half the county didn't own a watch and for those that did, winding it seemed a task too difficult. There was no such thing as being on time or late, only being in the right place at the right (or wrong) time. Summer's sweaty afternoons were endless, but dawn to dusk passed in a wink come spring planting or fall harvest. Thanksgiving to Christmas usually lasted about the same amount of time as a winter's nap, hours lost to the rush of avoiding the need to shop until the bare space under the tree could no longer be ignored.

But time ran syrupy-slow through December of 1971, sticking here and there until it seemed it would stop. And it was something he should have wanted, for the forward march of time to freeze right here before he had to catch that bus up to Camp LeJeune at the crack of dawn on the twenty-third. Except that the trade-off for the hours' stretched-taffy sluggish passage was the way his youngest cousin dragged through it. Chin and shoulders down when he didn't know Luke was looking, when they weren't using the tandem saw on that tree trunk that he and Maudine had hauled out of the drainage ditch, or driving over twisting roads to nowhere, when the distraction of replacing the rotted post at the end of the western fence line was done. Looked the same as the boy always had in the minutes after a whipping, when his pride and his backside still stung. But even on the worst of days of his past, the misery in Bo's heart could only sustain itself for minutes, maybe an hour at most, before glee would break out like a spontaneous case of measles, spreading across his face in a wide grin at some stupid, but entertaining, little event. This, what he was watching his cousin do now as he moped off to school and sulked his way back, languished through chores and brooded over dinner, was something else.

But it wasn't until his last weekend at home that Luke could put name to it. Four days before he was supposed to leave, and he'd made a point to spend a night cooking with Jesse and a day of driving all over creation with Daisy as she shopped for the perfect ingredients for their too-early Christmas dinner, and all that was left was Sunday afternoon with Bo. Warm enough to spend outdoors, so they hiked up out of Black Hollow on the hickory trail, across the ridge of Iron Mountain. Sitting on the stony peak with a view of all of Hazzard, warm enough that Bo slipped his shirt up over his head leaned back against the nearest boulder as if he might get a tan in the middle of winter. His chest was still bony, but those shoulders were just starting to get broad, and somewhere between extra chores and football, the muscles were starting to bulk out on those upper arms that had always been so ropy. Just a pair of boys, sprawled out under the angled rays of the sun, nothing but air between the two of them and heaven, and then Bo cleared his throat.

"Cousin," and it didn't sound like that little cough that preceded the word had helped a bit. "I ain't," because words were getting choked out in little fits. "I reckon things would be better," sounded like a sore throat and sniffles, but they both knew it wasn't. "I wish you could stay." Sitting up now, knees pulled close to his chest, and arms around them, every bit the miserable little boy, and finally Luke could make the four out of all the little twos of hints that the boy had been handing over to him.

Memories were misty things, like the Blue Ridge Mountains in the morning, but there were peaks rising above the fog that tried to obscure them. Things that were so clear and bright, and suddenly he could remember—

_Painfully blinding, that was the rage that had twisted at his gut until he screamed. Too old to behave like that, at least that was what he'd been told when he'd thrown those high caliber tantrums, but those were his mother's words. And it was his mother that he was raging against, or for, this time._

_His mother was gone, at least that was what he'd been told. So was his father, but that wasn't any big surprise, his father was gone a lot. Overnight, sometimes for a couple of days, and it never meant much of anything, but his mother being gone – that was wrong. Wrong that he was staying with his Uncle Jesse and Aunt Lavinia for more than an afternoon, wrong that he was supposed to sleep in that bedroom with the floors that creaked when it wasn't his home and his mother hadn't come in to watch him kneel at prayer, then sing him quiet lullabies while he drifted on the highs and lows of her notes until he slept. Wrong that his toddling, blonde cousin was always there when he woke up but his mother was – gone. Except she wasn't really, she was in the sitting room. He'd been told that, too, and it was very confusing. Not only that she could be gone and here, both, but that she could be just a thin wall away from him and he couldn't hear her, he never saw her, and she never, ever came to sit him on her knee and call him her little man. _

_Later there was church, and things were said about his mother, his father, his Uncle Jake. He saw her then, dressed in that pink dress that he'd hidden in the hem of the last time his Uncle Jesse had come to visit them in their little cabin on the lane, when that wide, red face had come down close to his, nuzzling him with it's rough beard, and he'd squealed and pretended to be scared, there in the pink folds of his mother's dress. Her hair was up in curls like she only wore it on special occasions, and her eyes were closed. She wasn't gone, she was right there. But she wasn't – right. Even if she hadn't been so pale and unmoving Luke would have come to that last conclusion, what with how she hadn't come to hug him, not even once. He was too big for hugs, and he'd told her so, but she never stopped trying, never gave up, and if no one was looking, sometimes he'd even give in and let her hold onto him._

_It was in the cemetery that he'd figured it out. His mother was, as he'd been told, gone. She'd left him, and not content to do it just once, she was about to leave him again. She was going into the ground, to a place where Aunt Lavinia, holding onto his arm with all her might, was telling him he couldn't follow her. White hot rage filled him then, and most of the details that followed were lost to him afterward. But there were bruises and cuts on him that lasted for days afterward, from where he'd flung himself against any hard surface he could find, and eventually there was Uncle Jesse holding him still against everything that was tearing him apart from the inside, and finally, there were apologies._

"_We thought you was old enough," Jesse later lamented, but it hadn't been his age that was the problem. It was that his mother had left him, and then, if that wasn't enough, she left him a second time._

And that was precisely what he was about to do to Bo right now, disappear on him again after this little interim of being back in his life.

"I reckon, it's best that I'm going," he answered. Sounded good, had a logical ring to it, even if he didn't quite mean it. "So's you can concentrate on school." It wasn't a lie, technically. And that was all that really mattered.

"I don't want to concentrate on school."

And that, at least, let him swallow down the bitterness he'd tasted at saying the words, and gave him a reason to smile. "I know you don't. I just figure it's for the best that you do." There were things to be learned in class, though Luke couldn't swear that there was a one that he could point out as being important right now. "I also figure it's for the best that you learn the trade from Jesse, not me." And that was also the truth, most likely. Their uncle knew more about revenuers than Luke could ever hope to, and if the old-timer wasn't exactly a daredevil behind the wheel, well, Bo didn't need any lessons in that regard anyway. "Besides, you won't have no reason to be hanging out with them loser friends of mine." Which they weren't really, but Bo was ready to get to rolling in the dirt with Dobro Doolan over foolish, spouted off words. And without Luke there between them his hot-headed cousin and the loud-mouthed idiot might really come to blows. "There's – you don't need me around, Bo. I'm in your way. You'll be safer with Jesse and have more fun with the other guys on the football and baseball team than you would if I was here."

No answer from Bo, and maybe he was thinking and maybe he was pouting, and maybe it didn't matter. Luke reckoned it was for the best if the boy got mad at him now. It was a sacrifice, because Bo was kin, and Luke couldn't just slip away from him like he had from Candy. So he'd see to it that his cousin spent a few days in a fit of temper and when the time came that Luke had to crawl out of bed well before dawn, slipping into the cold darkness of one of the shortest days of the year, off to town and onto a bus reeking of exhaust, his cousin would be glad to see him go. A little pain now to save a lot later.


	12. Part Two, Chapter Eleven

**Chapter Eleven**

_January 1972_

Christmas had been dreadful. Twice. The first one felt just as staged as it was, three days early and full of toothy smiles set stiff like they'd been shellacked onto the Dukes' faces. It fell on a Wednesday, but skipping school was sanctioned just this once so the whole family could play at celebrating a holiday. There was a tree, there were ornaments, there was a hearty meal the likes of which Luke claimed not to have seen since summer. There were hugs to stand in for presents, there was the photo album, but where it really fell apart was when the guitars came out and their voices tripped over carols. The fire burned down, the sun set over the brown grass, and fortunately, Luke decided to turn in early, giving the rest of them permission to stop pretending that the day was anything more than sad.

Four in the morning showed up just as unwelcome as ever, and despite the fact that his bed was warm and the floorboards cold, Bo rose. Barely dressed in yesterday's clothes, still pulling socks onto his feet when he stumbled into the kitchen.

"What're you doing here, cuz?" Surprise on Luke's dimly-lit face, as if there had been any chance that he would accept the proposition from the day before, the one that had his idiot cousin slipping out before dawn while the rest of them slept. Because he would be catching the four-fifty bus straight out of Hazzard, there was no reason anyone else had to get up, not when Luke could drive his own car to the station in town and let it stay there until someone else found the time to get out there and bring it back.

"Seeing you off," and a shrug just about covered it. Oh, his cousin liked to think he was smart, that he had every angle figured in advance, that he could direct people and outcomes through some sort of a half-baked plan. But no matter how many lectures he got about the various ways in which he'd be better off without Luke here, there was no way Bo would let the fool disappear without a proper goodbye. And just look at that, Jesse and Daisy were up, too. Coffee passed around, Jesse fussing over how Luke needed something in his stomach, but there wasn't time for that. Hugs and Luke trying to slip out the door alone, but they all stood together on the frosty porch, Daisy with her robe cinched tight against the wind.

"I'll be back in time for chores," he'd announced to Jesse, then taken the steps down to the farmyard two at a time, Luke protesting all the way. "Ain't no point in that," he'd answered his cousin's complaints. "You got to take me with you because I'm driving."

Awkwardly silent, that described most of the trip over darkened dirt roads, until the warning, "Slow it down, we ain't got to be attracting no attention to ourselves," came quietly grumbling out of Luke's mouth. And, true enough, there just might have been a revenuer hiding in the darkest shadows, though the clock had ticked past prime delivery time and was chugging on toward dawn. But it was that unsaid thing, about how they weren't really in that much of a hurry, that made Bo's foot lighten up on the accelerator a bit. "Go up the Ridge Road," his cousin added, and the fog of his interrupted sleep cleared away. Luke apparently wanted to take the high road and get one last glimpse of the peaks to their west, glowing in the moonlight. Maybe he had an urge to say goodbye to the land, though his cousin would never have admitted to any such thing out loud.

"I'm gonna miss you," Bo mumbled, even if he might shouldn't have.

"Bo—" came the protest, but it was cold, dark, and in truth they should both have been sleeping, ignoring the fact that chores lurked right around the corner. Ought to have been in bed with no one and nothing to come between them for more than the eight hours he was obligated to spend in school, but they weren't. They were in a car, skimming over red clay roads toward a sleeping town where Bo would have to let Luke go for longer than he wanted to think about, to places that he'd only seen orange-tinted photos of, with men and trees alike backlit by fireballs. Bo's patience got left behind in his sheets, still sleeping there where it would be of no use to either of them.

"Just hush up, Luke," came out tinged with anger. "I don't wanna hear how much happier I'm gonna be without you here, because it ain't true. I ain't gonna be no better off without you; I'm gonna miss you."

Which had put some sort of damper on whatever his cousin might have wanted to get out of taking the scenic route. They'd wound up making the rest of the trip in silence, then sitting in the warmth of the car, each staring out into their own patch of darkness while waiting for the bus to arrive. At least Luke had the good sense not to suggest that Bo just leave him there, standing in the icy wind on the concrete curb in front of the movie theater. So much quiet between them that he could hear the breath sucking into Luke's lungs before he bothered to turn his head and see the headlights of the approaching bus. Two boys bailed out of the Falcon, one popping the trunk's latch to grab for his duffel bag, the other reaching out to pull them into a hug. Clumsy sort of a thing, with the cloth of a bag caught between them, their arms struggling over which of them would take high ground and which low, but the grip was strong and warm, and showed no signs of wanting to be released.

"Be careful," Luke whispered in his ear, and he might have laughed and pointed out that whatever trouble he might get himself into didn't hold half the danger of where Luke was going, except his throat was tight and wouldn't let any words pass through it. Best he could do was to pat his cousin's back once in some sort of wordless acknowledgement, then again when he got reminded to look after Jesse and Daisy. Then their bodies pulled apart, his cousin's free hand coming up to mess up his hair with a smirk of goodbye, and he was pulling himself up the steep, steel stairs of the bus, leaving Bo alone on the cold asphalt with nothing to do but wave.

And, if possible, the second Christmas, the one that fell on the twenty-fifth and consisted mostly of quiet reflection interrupted by chores and a meal of leftovers followed by the evening service at church, was even bleaker.

But somewhere in the second week of January, in those days when it always seemed like the sun would never crest over the eastern horizon, and as soon as it did, it was doomed to drop behind the summits to the west anyway, he started to get letters from Luke. The whole family did, group letters and individual letters, and Bo took quiet satisfaction that the ones addressed to him seemed to fill the space allotted in those blue-and-red-bordered airmail envelopes more completely than the ones sent to his kin. Not by much, but just enough to make a small smile creep onto the corners of his lips. Even if it did disappear a few seconds later with the recognition – that slapped him in the face every time he felt the strangely thin paper of a letter from overseas in his hands – that there had been no reprieve for Luke. His cousin, the boy who'd grown up with the soil of Hazzard between his toes as he ran barefoot along the creeks that crisscrossed the countryside, was on the other side of the world. In a place called Cam Ranh Bay, he learned from that first letter, doing something he called Cherry School. The name made Bo laugh, even if he didn't like the idea of Luke being in Vietnam at all.

Though it didn't sound too bad, sounded interesting. A place where Luke would complain of sunburn in January, but enjoy time spent with other guys, some of whom had names like no one in Hazzard had ever tried to pronounce, all Ks and Zs and Ys. Where he worked outside in heat just as bad as summers here with the expressed intent that he would get used to the sun beating down on him, where he dug trenches that were deeper and wider than irrigation ditches but of the same basic construct, and filled bags with sand. The war, he said, didn't come too close to where he was, sounded like thunder always did in the Smokies when it was passing through the next valley to the west and presenting no immediate threat.

It was… _convenient _was the word that came into his mind, how the stories Luke sent in those letters sounded an awful lot like Hazzard transplanted to the eastern hemisphere: young guys working hard through the day, then going out into their surrounding environment and raising some hell. Sure, it was a Marine base, not an Appalachian town, but apparently cheap beer was served in a cinderblock building that was just as dark and ugly on the inside as the outside, and plenty of good-natured pushing and shoving took place in there before young men stumbled over dirt paths toward their beds. Luke was a Duke, he wasn't allowed to lie, so at least some of the time he had to be partaking in these safe-sounding activities. It was enough to give a guy hope for the safe return of his beloved kin.

* * *

Cherry School might have ended with an abrupt change of scenery, but apparently he hadn't stopped being a cherry. This fact got frequently pointed out to him by the other members of Echo Company, in particular the squadron to which he'd been assigned. Six men, including him, in the middle of nowhere in particular.

The days of light-duty adjustment to the heat of the tropics were over, and instead of being on white hot sands of a coastal plain, he was surrounded by thick vegetation, almost dizzying layers of green on green. Steep, slick climbs into hills every bit as beautiful as home. The soles of Luke's boots found the solid side of the loose dirt without too much thought on his part and he had no trouble keeping up with the rest of them, but he'd be nothing more than a cherry for some time to come to hear the other guys tell it.

They were a rough enough looking bunch, whose military haircuts and uniforms seemed a bit worse for the wear. They had a shared language amongst them that wasn't anything like Hazzard slang or moonshiners' code talk, but seemed to have grown right up out of the jungle around them.

"Look out for the cherry," Sergeant Tolliver called back from where he clung to the side of a slope, pointing out rocks that he'd just kicked loose. A part of Luke was affronted – he never would have slipped in that same place, not when he could see that those stones had been supported by soft dirt – but most of him was willing to let himself be looked out for.

"He's fine," Ackley called back up the line.

Seemed like his welfare had been appointed to the wide-shouldered, broad-backed Corporal Ackley. Mostly he'd been instructed to follow along and learn from the wisdom of the guys around him, but since he was bringing up the rear, all he could see was sweaty shirts and boot heels.

Still, Ackley had already taken him aside and taught him a few things.

"You can't go wearing your tags like that," had been the first thing he'd heard, and he'd done nothing more than raise an eyebrow about it. Seemed to him that when his dog tags had been issued, shortly after everything else that might have identified him had been taken away, he'd been informed in no uncertain terms that the short chain was to be looped through the long, and both tags were to stay affixed around his neck until such time as he either died or was discharged. "You'll get us all killed. Here," and before Luke could protest, the short chain had been pulled open, the second tag yanked off of it and handed to him. "Tie it into your boot laces where it won't go clattering around and tipping the enemy off to our location." And when he looked around at the other guys who'd spent time in the jungle, he saw that they had done the same, or taped the tags together to keep them silent. Seemed like wisdom to him, so he followed the instruction, even if Staff Sergeant Lewis nagged in the back of his head about how such an infraction would land him face-down on the parade grounds, doing extra calisthenics through the night. He wasn't on Parris Island anymore. "And dirty up some," Ackley had added, wiping mud onto Luke's cheeks and forehead. "You go out there all pink like that," like a sunburned cherry, "and your glowing face will be a fine target for sniper fire." Well, he'd have to remember that. He wasn't half as pretty as Bo, but he kind of liked his face arranged just the way it was.

Here, in the mountains that were as appealing in their own way as the Georgia scenery he'd left behind, he felt less the stumbling fool than he had back in the flatlands of camp. Shuttled from one place to another within Echo Company until he'd been placed with Tolliver, replacing a recently lost member of the squadron. He'd been an odd fit at first, still fighting off the desire to sleep when the day's heat got most oppressive, his helmet still pristine in comparison to the dings, nicks and decorations on those of his contemporaries, his boots still tight-fitting and bearing their military shine. But up on the slopes of the mountains, he'd come into his own. He could use the sharp blade of his Ka-Bar knife to cut through the vines, thicker and more dense than kudzu, as quickly and silently as any of them, knew the signs of nearby wildlife, and had no trouble with the exertion of the climb or the altitude when they crested a peak.

"Whoa," came Ackley's frustrated voice when Luke stepped up to help his new friend disentangle himself from a vine. "Keep your distance."

"Duke," the squadron leader grunted from about fifty paces above them. Third in line Sergeant Tolliver was, and that made a certain sort of sense. Right in the middle where he could watch both ends of the column, while a less important man, Marino, took point up front. The leader had himself a tough job, cutting a path where none had ever existed while keeping alert to the danger around them. If anyone could get them all killed, it would be Marino. Except that it was Luke who was getting chewed out right now, for breaking form and over-stepping his bounds. Apparently literally, what with how he was being told in no uncertain terms to keep a space between himself and any of the men on his team. "You don't want to get that close, not when we're walking unfamiliar territory," Tolliver was informing him. "We can't afford to lose two men at once. If you go stumbling into a booby-trap, I don't need you getting Ackley killed along with yourself."

Seemed kind of cold to him, and more than that, seemed like a man who didn't know what he was talking about. The way Ackley had been tripping over the greenery around him, he could have triggered a tripwire before he knew what happened to him. Luke Duke, raised in the moonshining hills of Georgia, knew precisely where to put his feet at all times in order to stay out of trouble and keep himself from getting shot. He was just looking after a friend, a companion, a good guy and new neighbor, exactly like his Uncle Jesse had taught him to. But they were in the middle of barbed-wire crossed jungle, dotted with bunkers, hostile territory. And it was his job to shut his mouth and listen to his superiors, so Luke kept his personal knowledge to himself. For now.

* * *

"Bo Duke," followed by a shaking head, but Miss Hawley never could keep those curls from forming at the corners of her lips, especially not when he smiled first. _Never show fear_ had been an early lesson from Jesse, though his uncle would not exactly sanction this particular application of his fine wisdom. It was a technique to be used on wild animals and revenuers, not the principal's secretary. Still, Bo felt fairly certain that he could justify his decision to hide his fear now, what with how a principal was merely a lawman without a uniform. And Bo was about to be convicted and sentenced to jail. Or detention, but really, how different were the two?

What was it that Luke had said? Something about how much easier it would be for Bo to concentrate on school with him gone. Funny how all the teachers that he'd had over the years always thought the older Duke boy was so smart, when in reality he was was a complete idiot. Even if Bo hadn't already been prone to daydreaming through grammar lessons, the pictures in his head of bloody war, with Luke in the middle running from a glowing ball of fire, would have provided a bit of a distraction.

"What did you do this time?"

_Never admit to anything, not without a lawyer's advice._ Another fine piece of insight from Jesse Duke, and it seemed such a shame that his uncle was likely going to whip him, rather than praise him, for taking it.

"Nothing," and he let his grin widen, because it was the truth he was telling. He'd done absolutely nothing – no homework, no studying, heck, he hadn't even cracked a textbook. Not last night when he'd been assigned to answer twelve questions about Nationalist insurrection in Spain, and not just now, when Miss Price had told the class to open them up to page a hundred thirteen. "Your hair looks mighty pretty up like that." Oh yeah, and a smile never did hurt when it came to giving a lady a compliment.

"Oh, Bo Duke, you stop that," but she didn't mean it. "You just sit down and I'll get Mr. Parnell for you." Well, how helpful of her. Because Bo sure was in a hurry to see the principal.

"Yes, Ma'am," he answered and if what was on his face started looking more like gritting teeth than a flirtatious grin, he didn't reckon he could be blamed for that.

Hard wooden chair on the far side of the counter at which Miss Hawley was perpetually stationed, and he'd sat here often enough that he figured he ought to have worn grooves in the seat by now. He also should have remembered to bring along something with which to distract himself, because experience told him that sitting still and thinking about how much the whip stung against his backside made for a lousy way to pass the time while he waited for the principal to get around to making him squirm in the softer chair of his office. And that was before the man went calling in reinforcements in the form of one red-faced and already steaming Uncle Jesse. Though he supposed he could try guessing how many pieces of gum were stuck to the underside of the chair, then turn it over to see how accurate he'd been.

"Fighting?" Fortunately, his thoughts got interrupted before it came to that.

"No, sir," he answered the principal, a man nearly as wide as he was high. It seemed a cruelty that he spent most of his day on the far side of a counter that he was barely tall enough to look over.

"Well, thank heaven for small mercies. Come on." And Bo was about to be marched off to his own execution, through the swinging half-door, behind the counter and into the small office at the back. He let himself be ushered in and heard the door click behind him. The next time it opened, it would be to admit one dangerously riled uncle. And the minutes between now and then wouldn't exactly be a pleasure.

Aunt Lavinia was there in his head, reminding him to sit up straight, not to slouch sullenly no matter what his body might instinctively want to do. And then when his eyes might have preferred to stare at the floor, the memory of his aunt nagged at him again, prompting him to look his elder in the eye. Or close enough; Bo frequently found himself distracted by the man's nearly-black mustache that always looked like he'd just eaten a greasy meal, even this early in the day when the cafeteria hadn't yet opened for lunch.

"So?" came the inevitable question. "To what do I owe the honor of your presence today?" Principals, he decided, should not be allowed to use sarcasm. They just didn't have the first idea how to properly wield it. "If you weren't fighting, what were you doing?"

"As far as I understand it, I was sent down here for not paying attention in class." _Though I can't be sure whether I'm right about that, what with how I wasn't paying attention and all. _But the better part of wisdom kept him from saying that part out loud. After all, the way he had it calculated, he might get away with just three licks of the whip. No need to go boosting it to five.

A big sigh from the man across the desk. Apparently, Bo was a terrible disappointment to the principal. Then again, he always had been, and he couldn't see any reason to go turning over a new leaf now.

"You Duke boys. It's too bad you aren't a chip off your cousin Daisy's block. I can't think of a single time I've had to talk to her like this. Unfortunately, you're just like Luke."

In truth he didn't think it was such a shame to have turned out like his oldest cousin, but he didn't reckon that now was the best time to mention that he was kind of partial to Luke and considered being compared to him to be something of a compliment.

"How is Luke doing, anyway?"

A cocked eyebrow and silence seemed like plenty of an answer to him: _how do you think he's doing? _Mr. Parnell could be found sitting in the third pew, slightly left of center, in the Methodist Church of Hazzard on most Sunday mornings. He had to have heard Luke's name mentioned amongst the deacon's weekly call for prayers.

But a church wasn't the only thing the principal shared with the Duke family; he'd been to many a meal at the farmhouse table. He knew that no one raised by Jesse Duke could maintain silence in the face of a direct question.

"I reckon he's all right. Don't hear from him much now that he's been deployed." Somewhere around two weeks ago there had been a few lines written on a thin slip of paper, then sent across continents and oceans. It informed them all that Cherry School was over and that Luke had been assigned to a battalion, a company, a platoon, a squadron, all of which had military-sounding names. The last sentence, just before the _Love, Luke_, had mentioned an upcoming mission. Everything since then had been between Bo and his imagination.

"Can't be easy for you, not knowing." Just like that the rug got ripped out from under his cocky, self-assured façade, and damn it all, his eyes were burning and his throat was tight.

Quiet seconds, ticking to minutes while he forced his mind to better places. Like the fact that Saturday was only a couple of days away, and he reckoned that if he asked real nice and smiled pretty, Pattie-Ann Hamilton might just agree to spend the afternoon snuggling close and sharing dollar box of popcorn in front of the Hazzard Theater's dusty old screen while whatever movie the owners had been able to scare up lit up her red curls like the petals of a spring flower.

"The way I see it," Parnell was saying, just about the time he got to imaging how soft the girl's lips might be, "you've got too much energy to sit still and study properly. Now if you were to come up to a solution to that problem on your own, I don't figure I'd need to involve your uncle at all." Bo squinted slightly, looking for the trap in what had just been said to him. "But you've got about three minutes to do the solving."

Well, there it was. He'd just about been given a reprieve, led right up to the edge of it and allowed to look at it in all its unwhipped, unscolded glory, before learning that his only method of actually crossing the threshold into that beautiful world would involve thinking quickly. It just wasn't his specialty. If only Luke were here…

"Basketball." It just fell out of his mouth before his brain even had time to catch up. "You know, I bet that if I joined the basketball team," which Luke had suggested to him last winter when he came home with a split lip and grudge, "I'd run off all that energy practicing every afternoon."

"And playing every Friday night," Parnell reminded him. Yeah, it would put a crimp in his social life, but it was better than the utter absence of any sort of life that he was facing if his uncle got called in here today. Besides, Luke wasn't half wrong about him. He probably could enjoy playing basketball again if he set his mind to it. "You reckon you can make the team?" the principal asked.

There was nothing to say to that but, "You bet." He even thought he sounded halfway like Luke when he said it.


	13. Part Two, Chapter Twelve

**Chapter Twelve**

_February 1972_

If he'd had earplugs, if he could have dampened the smell a bit, made it less burned-out and more like an ash log fire burning low under a still, if he could have squinted his eyes enough to see only the colors and basic shapes of his surroundings, this might have been the mountains of home during the heat of August. But blocking his senses was the luxury of lazy afternoons with nothing better to do than lay on his back and daydream while a stream burbled by the hook of his fishing line. This here was not exactly that sort of a fishing trip, which was a shame in more ways than one.

A month in Vietnam, three weeks with his squadron, on his second mission and already he reckoned he'd be plenty happy if he never ate another meal from a cardboard box with "Ration, Combat, Individual" stamped across the top, never pulled out P-38 opener to get into even one more can of meat and vegetable stew. It wasn't anything he recognized as pork or beef, not carrots or potatoes or anything other than brown, chunky, salty soup. He was hungry from long humps over steep and slippery slopes, so he ate it, but he wasn't sure he'd call it food.

If they had secured a perimeter, if they felt safe enough to sit reasonably close together for awhile in the brush and raise their voices to more than a whisper, he would learn things. A whole new vocabulary, honestly, some of which was quite colorful, and he found himself using words for which his uncle would stick a bar of soap in his mouth. (Then again, considering the flavor of the C-Rations, he figured his tongue might just welcome a good washing.) But it was the new applications of perfectly safe words that stuck with him more.

"If you ain't hungry, I'll be glad to finish that for you," coming from his left; Horn's words.

"Just you keep that spoon in your own can." Heck, he'd spent the better part of a lifetime sharing three feet of scarred kitchen table with Bo Duke. Defending his food was like breathing, occurring without pre-planning or deep thought.

"Can I have your fruitcake then?"

Well, he wasn't particularly attached to that. Cake, fruit or otherwise, wasn't anything that ought to come in a can.

"Don't you do it," Tolliver instructed. "You're going to need that sugar."

"Oh, man," Horn whined, and even when he was five, Bo hadn't sounded that pathetic. "He doesn't even want it."

"Nevertheless," was all the Sergeant had to say to make the discussion shift. Seemed like the kind of skill Luke might want to learn in order to put an end to foolish arguments in those twilit moments at the Hazzard Garage while five overgrown boys lounged on souped-up cars and waited for someone to declare it dark enough to race.

"Can't wait to get some real food." That was Meyers, picking up the sentiment, starting the same discussion that followed them from hill to hollow, got dropped in the elephant grass of a plain, only to be picked up again on a rocky crag. "Pork chops."

It was enough to make a man wish he was on lookout, perched up the hill by himself like Ackley was. Fantasies of home-cooked meals should never share space with C-Rats.

"Here," he tossed the cigarettes and matches that came with every meal over in the direction of the pair of complainers. "Don't say I never gave you nothing." Heck he could afford to be generous with things he never even wanted to begin with.

"When I get back out into _The World_," and there it was, one of those phrases that had meant one thing most of his life, but had changed the minute he'd crossed into the Eastern Hemisphere. The World – which was anyplace but here, really. "First thing I'm going to get is a pizza." That was Meyers, a New York boy. The sort who thought his state had invented everything (except chitterlings, which he'd never even heard of) and pizza was no exception. As far as Meyers was concerned, there was no such place as Italy.

The World, and about the quickest Luke could expect to be out there again was about another twelve months. Unless, like Ackley, he did two tours over here. It was a fool's choice, but it pretty much guaranteed that a Marine would get sent home afterward instead of doing non-combat duty someplace like Germany for a couple more years. Luke was seriously considering it, so long as he could stay in Tolliver's squadron. He felt pretty safe here, staying in the shadows, working out the enemy's activities, but never quite engaging with them. Actual battle was the job of the guys in infantry. _Contact_, that was what guys called firefights over here, like it was as harmless as touching. Or _the ballgame_, which sounded even crazier to a guy who'd played plenty of sports over his life and never seen a man bleed more than a drop or two from his nose – and then only in the roughest of games.

But here, where the hollow of a mountain cradled him as safely as his mother's arms must once have, both _contact_ and _the ballgame_ felt pretty remote.

"Duke," Tolliver barked. Made him jump a little, made him look up. "That's better," his superior told him. "You can't be letting your attention wander, not even for a minute. Ackley's only got two eyes and two ears. You go daydreaming like that, you might miss trouble walking right up to you."

Seemed unlikely; even if his eyes were down, his ears were those of a well-trained woodsman, and his nose could pick up the scent of deer and coon, so he reckoned he could probably smell the enemy, too. But, "Yes, sir," was all the answer that was called for at the moment.

"What were you thinking about, anyway?"

Trick question, and _home_, even if it was the truth, was the wrong answer. A Marine wasn't meant to think about anyplace he wasn't.

"The mountains," he said, and he reckoned it was close enough to honesty to pass the Jesse Duke test.

"What about them?" It was some sort of quiz. Maybe he was supposed to say how there were hidden dangers in them, or that he was learning how to conserve his drinking water, not to mention his energy, as they hiked over them. But neither was exactly true. Far as he could tell, the dangers here were no better hidden than a half-crazy, shotgun-armed moonshiner would be back at home, and he already knew how to both find and avoid something like that. As to the effort it took to climb over a mountain, well that didn't change just because he had gone halfway around the world. It was hard work made easier by knowing a few tricks of the trade.

"I's just thinking about how weird it is that we ain't never get to know one mountain before we move on to the next." So many crevices and hollows, coves and thickets that went unexplored, that kept their secrets to themselves because the six of them walked over mountains like they were just paths from here to there instead of pockets of life, places of refuge, a fine collection of shadows in which to hide. That was, of course, in those places where the vegetation hadn't been deliberately burned away in a napalm fueled blaze. Disconcerting swaths of bare patches; it just didn't seem fair that the disputes of men had to take such a toll on the land.

"We haven't got the time or luxury of learning these mountains, boy. Our job is to keep ourselves alive long enough to figure out what the VC and NVA are up to, then report it back in time to keep the rest of our troops alive. Or as many as possible, anyway." Which figured. Tolliver was Iowa-raised, about as much of a homegrown flatlander as the United States had ever produced. The sort who would believe that if a thing didn't present itself in plain sight, it didn't exist.

"The way I see it," he said because he had to, even if he was jumping rank. The other guys were tangled up in conversations about steak and potatoes anyway, so if Tolliver gave him a dressing down, it would likely stay between the two of them. "We ain't got time_ not_ to learn these mountains."

That answer earned him a cocked eyebrow that seemed to be asking just who he thought he was, but he had his squadron leader's attention.

* * *

"Watch your fingers and watch your toes." It was enough to make a guy laugh, even if it was only Monday afternoon and there were a full four days of school stretching out in front of him. A slam of the hood on the sheriff's cruiser, and a silly, gap-toothed grin from a man who most likely hadn't changed his clothes since the nineteen sixties. Hair that looked like it had been trimmed by a steak knife and smudges of grease and whiskers hiding what might just be dimples. Give the man a bath, some clean jeans and a couple of months of heavy farm work to build out his muscles, and he might just attract himself a few ladies, maybe even a special one that would get him to settle down. Though Bo had to guess that it wasn't exactly in Cooter's plans to get married anytime soon.

"Now," the mechanic pointed over to the far wall where his tools were carefully hung. Funny how the man cared so little for his own tidiness, but loved his gear enough to be sure it never got lost or came in direct contact with the grease that lay in puddles on the concrete floor of his shop. "Get me that mallet. Not that one, the two-point-five-pounder." Heavy duty. The sheriff must have wrapped himself around a telephone pole again. He'd most likely blame it on the New Year's budget cuts that had stolen a deputy out from under him, leaving him only two underlings with which to hunt down violators, but that excuse would be nothing but bluster. Rosco Coltrane hadn't missed out on a chase since that winter in nineteen fifty-eight when he'd been laid low with the flu. Man pursued fleeing cars like a dog after a bone. A half-starved, blind, scent-addled dog with a lousy sense of direction, that was. Meant he had intimate acquaintance each and every tree and telephone pole in the county.

"Ol' Rosco done had himself a rough weekend, huh? Who was he after this time?"

Skeptical look from Cooter. "Wasn't me, so how the heck would I know?"

"That there repeater on your roof. Don't tell me you wasn't listening in on whatever radio chatter was going on."

Dirty laugh that answered everything Bo needed to know without a word needing to be spoken. "Let's just say that old Ben Wilkenson done made his deliveries just fine. Now," the man took the mallet from Bo's hands and set to banging at the cruiser's bumper. Made an awful racket, made the hunk of metal loosen its last hold on the car and clatter to the floor below. Raised eyebrow from the mechanic like he wasn't expecting such a disobedient act. "I don't remember a lot about school." Truer words had probably never passed through those lips. "But ain't you got homework or something?"

"Cooter," he complained, and if it sounded a bit put out, he reckoned he was entitled to that. He got enough of that kind of talk at home.

"Well," came the defense, "I may not remember much about school, but I do remember a thing or two about Jesse Duke. And it seems to me he wouldn't hesitate to tan _my_ hide for letting you help me with this here bumper if you was to have homework that you was ignoring in the process."

Whatever those few years of the late sixties in Texas had done to pickle Cooter's brain, there were still some solid facts in stored away in there.

"Yeah, he'd tan your hide, and mine would be twice as red when he was done. But he ain't gonna whip neither of us, because he knows I'm here. Only for about a half hour or so while Daisy picks up some things at Rheubottoms, then I'll go home and do my homework, all right?" One of those quirky side effects to sharing Luke's car, these occasional after-school excursions. As an unexpected bonus, he got to pretend to be annoyed by them, but since Daisy didn't really want his grousing company in the general store, he could find his own method of killing some time in town.

"All right then, get over here and hold this here thing so's I can get it straightened out again." The banging set up a vibration that rattled his teeth just about out of his head, but fortunately Cooter took the occasional break to get a good look at his handiwork. "How's old Lukas doing?" filled one such gap that might otherwise have been blissfully quiet.

"Don't rightly know," was a relatively honest answer. Letters from that side of the world were infrequent and short, mostly mentioning that it was plenty hot and the food wasn't so great, but Luke didn't even have a scratch on him for all the miles he'd hiked and nights he'd spent in hastily dug bunkers.

But the dearth of words from overseas didn't stop Bo from replying. Interesting to remember that only a few months ago he'd figured that he didn't know what to say in a letter, couldn't write out what his heart felt. Now that kind of thing came easy. Pages and pages of penciled descriptions of his days, confessions about the girls he yearned for versus the ones he spent time with, complaints about school and teachers, and the best part of it all was that he wrote a lot of them right under the very noses of the teachers he liked least. Mornings that used to stretch out endlessly in front of him now passed quickly into afternoons as he wrote down every nibble of news that Luke was missing out on.

What the school officials didn't know wasn't hurting any of them. Peace broke out between him and his teachers and it wasn't his fault that they assumed that what he was writing had anything to do with whatever they were going on about at the front of the room. As to that homework that Cooter was so worried about him doing, well, that would probably mostly consist more letter-writing. Being that he couldn't exactly remember whether homework had been assigned in any of his classes anyway.

"Well, don't you worry none. That cousin of yours is a wily cuss. I'm sure he's fine."

The mechanic's concern was appreciated, it really was. The man was gentler than Jesse gave him credit for when his aging uncle warned that Cooter was still halfway wild and that the youngest of the Duke clan would do well to let him tame down a bit more before spending a lot of time with him.

Besides, Bo already knew Luke was fine, could feel it as solidly as the steady beat in his chest.

Memories, as soft and discolored as the paper on which the old family photos were printed, and if there were unwanted creases, there were also those recollections that were preternaturally bright, perfectly preserved. His head, pillowed in Aunt Lavinia's skirted lap, her hands running through his hair, borrowing his imagination to make her tales better. At least that was what she always claimed, but even then he sort of recognized the soothing movements of her fingers as being sleep-inducing.

On lucky days he'd redirect her from the folk tales she liked so much and get her to tell him about his kin, stories of his father and Luke's and the trouble those two could get into. He'd learn snippets about his mother, hear again how beautiful she was, the way she'd caught his father's attention the first time he saw her and held onto every bit of it until the day they left this world. Things might get boring for awhile, while his aunt waxed dreamy over the wedding they'd had and the way his mother looked in her white lace dress, how handsome all of Jesse's brothers were as the groomsmen, and the angle at which the afternoon sun shone through the stained glass windows of the church. If he could keep his eyes open through the long details of the wedding and tolerate rosy descriptions of the early days of the marriage that unfolded in that cabin on the ridge, she'd get to the part where he was born. From there it was only a short stretch of hearing how he was his mother's angel baby until Lavinia finally got to his favorite part, about the hearts.

Well, his parents had to die first, but that fragment of the story was always mercifully brief. The Lord called, and despite how they wanted to stay behind with him, is Mama and his Daddy had no choice but to answer.

_But they made sure you'd never be alone_, his Aunt would assure him in a conspiratorial little whisper. _Every beat you feel in your chest should remind you of that. Because the Lord was calling them home, but on the way, they stopped for a minute over your crib. Oh, you wouldn't have been able to see them there, they were in their spirit forms. But they gave you one last gift: Luke's heart, and then they took yours and gave it to him, too. That's why your tears make him sad, and it's why you like to be near him all the time. Your hearts know that you were meant to be the best of friends. Don't you ever let your silly cousin tell you different – your heart knows._

He was too old now, surely, to believe in the tales of an aging woman who'd never given birth but found herself a mother struggling to calm energetic little boys all the same. But – there went another thump in his chest, echoing on itself as it kept him alive – his heart knew, just as it always had, that Luke was fine out there. And if something happened to his cousin, even if the boy was clear on the far side of the earth, Bo reckoned his own heart would stop the minute that it happened.

"I know he is, Coot. Now, you gonna finish banging the dents out of this here thing or are you gonna stand there looking at me all afternoon?"

* * *

_March 1972_

He was just a clever little Duke, oh, he was a genius. He'd congratulate himself on his brilliance if only he could spare a brain cell to it.

For now he had other pressing concerns, like analyzing the hanging droplets of remnant moisture from the morning dew as he walked under the leaves of low branches, memorizing the rhythm of five different boot steps over stone and loose dirt, and distinguishing the smell of his own sweat from that of another human's or the musky scent of an animal.

Hand high in the steamy air, he called a silent halt. Waited as his signal made its way down the line of the squadron, all the way to the end of the column, where the thick bodied Horn was bringing up the rear, well below. Waited for the eyes to come back up toward where he stood, then pointed off to his left, forefinger tracing the thin line that ran through the low foliage, bending fern leaves in directions that nature never would if left to her own devices. Some sort of trip wire, and he'd bet his life (because that was what was at stake here) that what was at the end of it wasn't as innocent as a few bottles clinking together to warn whoever had set it there of the approach of unfamiliar feet. Unlike a moonshiner's trap, this one was armed to kill.

Kept on pointing, eyes trained on Meyers until he saw recognition dawning across those dirt-smudged, sunburned features, then kept on watching as the danger was silently conveyed to the Sergeant, next in line. From there he knew all would follow safely; newly-promoted Corporal Duke, as the point man, had done his job of alerting his squadron to the risk snaking along their left flank. He shifted over to the right about a half dozen steps, picking a new, heavily vine-laden trail to cut.

Yep, he was a real smart guy, that Luke Duke. Time spent explaining to his superior officer how he thought they needed to see the mountains as their friends, the givers of life instead of automatically designating them as enemy territory, and he must've been convincing. Must've assumed all the authority of his Uncle Jesse on a tear, must've sounded real sure of himself.

Point man, charged not only with keeping himself alive, but the whole squadron. The guy who'd take the first bullet, if they stumbled into the wrong thicket. The man who blazed a trail through the webs made by spiders big enough that they'd put Daisy under her bed for a week if she ever saw them, the guy who discovered the hard way whether the ground underneath was solid or would crumble beneath them, the one who got first crack at cutting his way through the vines.

At least, he thought, his right hook would have more power behind it next time he got into the ring. And improved endurance, managing roundhouse after uppercut without getting half as tired as it used to. There were other benefits to being at the point, like how he'd finally gotten shed of being called a cherry. Mostly, anyway. Marino still clung to the nickname _Cherry Duke_ like it was a lifeline, and maybe it was. Behind Luke, Marino was the newest member of the squadron, the youngest, and for all that he was dark of hair and skin, deeply reminiscent of Bo. A touch too big and loud for his current (or any, when it came right down to it) circumstances.

The final shedding of his cherry skin, at least as far as the rest of the guys went, took place in a quiet ceremony on the first day of the current mission. Dug into trenches at the top of Hill 571, bunking with some other guys from Echo Company for one night, and Ackley handed over his black marker, the one he carried with him everywhere.

"It's time, Duke," he got informed. Do or die, join the club or expect to be harassed. The time had come to deface his lid. He was the only one in his squadron with a naked helmet.

He couldn't explain why he didn't want to do it, knew he'd just get laughed at and told to wake up already if he tried. Heck, the very reason he was getting prompted to do it was half of why he didn't want to. Graffiti on the helmet, scribbled words, crude drawings, symbols that meant something only to the wearer, made them a part of the group, one of the guys. And as long as his headgear stayed pristine, Luke could halfway convince himself that he didn't belong here with these guys, that he was just a misplaced Hazzard boy who would get sent back to where he came from soon enough. As long as his uniform didn't look lived in, worn and well-used, he could imagine himself home.

But he'd learned this lesson once already, on the parade grounds and in the surf of Parris Island, under the calculating watch of a seemingly cruel Staff Sergeant who had given every appearance of hating him. No matter how strong his arms or his resolve, he couldn't hold himself above the Marine Corps, couldn't let being a Hazzard boy or a Duke supersede the fact that he was also, like it or not, a Marine. So he took the pen and made a few crude marks at the compass points of his helmet: A "J" at the front, or due north, for his guiding star of an uncle, a "D" at the back, or south, for his sweet southern belle of a female cousin, an "L" over his right ear for the eastern hemisphere, where he'd be for the foreseeable future, and a "B" over the left, for the western mountains of Georgia, where he hoped his youngest cousin would always stay.

"I don't get it," Meyers had complained.

"You wasn't meant to," Luke mumbled back to him.

But as the night grew quiet, and the squadron settled to its own corner of the hill, he'd whispered the meaning behind each of the letters to Ackley, and been rewarded with a small smile and a chance to look at the few photos that the older Marine had brought with him on this tour of duty. A machinist father, a part-time store clerk of a mother, a wide-eyed brother named Paul, and a gangly kid sister he called Katie. Ackley, or Phil, because last names only took a man so far in life, understood family like the rest of the guys didn't seem to.

But even if he had yet to explain the meaning behind the graffiti on the cloth of his helmet cover to all of them, most of the guys had made up their minds that he was a bona fide member of the squadron now. And more than that, they trusted him to keep them safe as long as he was at the point.

Signal from below him, Tolliver whistling a rest break. Luke scanned the area and pointed out a high spot in the rocks where they could gather and settle, eat some lousy food, bicker and debate whether grape jam counted as a fruit or a vegetable. It might not be Hazzard, but for where he was, Luke was having himself a reasonably good day.


	14. Part Two, Chapter Thirteen

**Chapter Thirteen**

_April 1972_

Daisy. A scream from somewhere in the house and it sure as heck didn't sound good. High pitched and it was not the kind of sound the girl had ever been known to make, even when that ugly-looking wolf spider had taken up residence in the corner of the bathroom only to be discovered by her tidying hands.

His feet were running, making short work of the ground between the tree-lined back edge of the farmyard and the old house up front before his brain even caught up to wondering what in heck could make his tomboy of cousin holler like that.

_Take care of Daisy_; that had been one of Luke's clearer instructions to him. _She doesn't know how pretty she's growing up to be_, but somewhere between that awkward conversation and this damp Saturday afternoon it seemed like she might have figured it out. Sweet as a flower, but her nectar attracted every boy in the school, and how the heck was he supposed to look out for her when she'd graduate in the next couple of months and he'd still be stuck in school all day? It still wasn't fair that she'd get done a whole year before he would. Or maybe two, because he didn't anticipate passing too many of his final exams.

But if he had to be honest (and he did, there were family rules about that), there was no way he could do what his oldest cousin asked of him, not the slightest chance he could protect Daisy because she was a Duke, born obstinate and independent. Girl was certain that she could handle herself no matter what came at her; whether it was a bear or a man, she reckoned that the sharp heel of those crazy high shoes she wore was all the weaponry she needed to ensure her safety. She would, without thought, march right into trouble and invite it to take its best shot at her, and what, exactly, was he supposed to do about that? It was a fine little fantasy that Luke had, as far as protecting their sweetly stubborn cousin went.

Though neither of them would have expected him to fail as badly as he apparently had, what with that scream coming from the house while he was halfway to nowhere important, enjoying his last relaxing Saturday before planting, content to let the fine spring drizzle soak into his skin and hair so long as it kept softening the ground for the plow and left the air as sweet-smelling as the newly emerging flowers. Watching the mist roll across the green grass, breaking to find its way through the dark fence line than closing in again, and he had been doing nothing more than admiring the beauty of the land he grew up on when he should have been tending to his family.

Long strides, no time to accommodate the porch steps, he just leapt up onto the old boards and flung the kitchen door open with one hand, the other arm already cocked back in anticipation of leveling whoever it was that made Daisy's frightened voice come hurtling across the farmyard at him that way. Nothing there but a dim and dingy kitchen with chairs that were determined to catch under his feet as he charged deeper into the house, into the living room where lacy curtains hung over wide windows in pinkish hues and there, on the floral pattern that some female ancestor must have upholstered onto the old wooden frame of the couch, was his pale cousin. Half reclined with Jesse standing there waving at the air in front of her. No one else in the house, no intruder just begging to be subdued, no blood anywhere, but his body didn't relax one bit.

"Daisy?" he squeaked out, even if he knew she wouldn't be saying anything right away, not with the way her eyes were closed and her breathing shallow. "Jesse?" Eyes left then right, even up and down, looking for the enemy, the being or object that would sink so low as to hurt his cousin, and coming up empty.

"Sit, boy," his uncle growled, but the man was a fool if he thought that Bo would let whoever did this to Daisy get away with it. Luke might not be here, but that didn't mean anyone had the right to—"now."

It was the kind of command that couldn't be disregarded, had to be instantly obeyed, and he was halfway to doing it with the _yes, sir_ all poised on his tongue but in that moment Daisy's eyes opened and fixed on him.

"Daisy?" he repeated and somehow or other, despite Jesse's sputterings and complaints about how they both needed to sitting down right this moment, she pulled herself to her feet. Not fully or not for long, either way, she was suddenly in his arms, the weight and heat of her against his chest, the warmth of her tears soaking into his shirt where cool rain had fallen minutes before. "What?" he asked, but he already knew. It wasn't even the off-white tinted paper on the coffee table that told him so. It was the air in the room, so heavy after the freshness of what he'd been strolling through outside, it was the way his uncle barked at his kids to sit, like he'd only ever done when he was frightened for their safety.

"He'll be all right, Daisy-girl," he whispered into that dark hair where he rested his unshaven cheek. He knew that, too, even if he hadn't read the telegram yet, even if no one had found the words to tell him what it said. He knew it because his heart still was beating – a touch too fast and hard for his liking, but it was steady enough – in his chest. "He'll be fine."

* * *

If all of it – everything from the moment he set foot on Parris Island through boot camp and recon training, from cherry school to jungle missions and even those quiet moments with Candy and the month on leave in Hazzard – was a bad dream, a long scar of a memory from a gaping wound that he didn't want to claim ownership of, this, right here, was where it became a nightmare.

For all that he'd spent hours back at Parris Island struggling against the foamy Atlantic surf, gulping down salt water until he thought he'd desiccate from the inside out, it wasn't water that was pulling him down.

Gravity, who in her simplicity could not distinguish between a leaf and a man and wouldn't care if she could, had a grip on him and no intention of letting go. The air that ought to be catching in his chute was gusting by his face, blowing its laughter into his ears as he struggled to slow his descent through it, legs akimbo, arms flailing in a mockery of the ugly buzzards that glided so gracefully through the sky. He was going to die doing the thing that he'd pretty much figured he could manage in his sleep: a jump. Of course, in his sleep his parachute would have opened. Here, in this too-real nightmare, there was nothing between him and a nasty looking landing zone where trees would be vying with rocks for the pleasure of impaling him.

Violence, a jerk, and all the air coughed out of his lungs when there came a powerful assault upon his rib cage. Hands, arms around him and he fought against the instinct to turn around and grab onto the man who was holding him from behind. If there was any chance of this working, he had to relax and find his breath where it had been lost to the wind, had to think, to concentrate his efforts on using his own right hand to fumble around until it fell on the release cord of the other man's chute, had to brace himself for the jarring change in momentum, had to make his heavy body easy to hold onto for as long as possible.

"Gonna have to drop you, Luke," he heard after the ground had slowed in its ascent toward them, and the surprise wasn't in the words but in who was saying them – not Tolliver like he would have figured, but Ackley. Didn't matter anymore, it was all right, they were coasting at the top of the tree line now, not a lot higher than they'd be if they'd had to jump from a chopper.

Before he could even nod his agreement that he be let go of so the other man could land halfway safely, gravity had its hold on him again. Spinning, twisting, and unless he could get control of his body this was going to hurt, was going to be a lot worse than hitting the hardpan of the football field in December under a crushing tackle from Chicasaw's oversized linebacker, Bubba Cole. He had to get his body upright, his feet set and—

The ground hit him.

Pain, but it wasn't so bad, wasn't anything he couldn't handle so long as he could get his lungs to reinflate. He'd be fine, just fine, and if the first words out of his mouth might have been a croaked out call for his Uncle Jesse, the man with strong arms and even stronger moonshine who had healed every illness and injury of his childhood, well his voice was weak enough that he could hope no one quite heard him.

"Meyers," came Tolliver's voice from somewhere above him, calling on the squadron's combat trauma specialist.

"I'm fine," he said, because he had to be. He was in the middle of the jungle with nothing but a twenty-year-old smart-talking boy to see to whatever injuries he had sustained. Besides, it was his job to lead the six of them safely over this hill that he'd crash landed into, so he sat up. Intended to get all the way to his feet, but then again, he didn't feel so good.

"Easy, Duke," Tolliver counseled, hovering nearby and gesturing for Meyers to come check him out. "Marino, bring me the radio."

"Ain't no need," he tried, but then Meyers was there, poking at places that hurt, seeking out the sources of the blood that stained his uniform here and there, staring into his face and making him use his eyes to trace the movement of a finger. "I'm fine," he announced again when the examination was done.

"So you've said," the Sergeant agreed. "Now, if it's all right with you, I'm going to get Meyers' opinion."

No, it wasn't exactly all right with him. It was more time sitting here, and as any coach worth their salt would tell you, a hit like Luke had just taken needed to be walked off so he could get back in the game.

"Bumps and bruises, mainly," Meyers announced. "He's scraped up pretty good, got some open abrasions and his knee's swelling." Heck he'd gotten hurt worse than that when Maudine dragged him around the south forty. Never stopped him from getting back on his feet, righting the plow and finishing what he'd started.

"Like I said, I'm fine." And he would be, too, if Tolliver would let him stand instead of pushing down against his shoulder.

"Duke, sit. Ackley and Horn, set up a perimeter, Marino, get that radio over here, then join your buddies on watch. Duke," he scolded again, but if he'd just let Luke up he'd see that there was no reason for all this drama. "You may be fine, but I'd just as soon you were fine back at Cam Ranh, so just sit tight while I call the chopper back and scout out an LZ for it. Meyers, if he won't sit still for you, give him an injection or a blow to the head, whatever will make him stay put."

It was foolishness, it was dangerous and crazy, and it was going to happen whether Luke liked it or not. So he laid back and rested his eyes. Just for a minute, all he wanted was a few seconds of peace, and there Meyers was, jawing at him to stay awake. So he let the guy talk him just about to death, that harsh accent rattling around in his ears as he listened to tales of growing up on Long Island with girls and souped-up cars, and just about the time he'd been talked into the sort of stupor that made him think that New York sounded an awful lot like Georgia, Tolliver made it back to them. A landing zone would take a few hours to clear, and he'd do it if there was no other way, but if Luke thought he could ride a short distance on a rope ladder—

"Ain't no reason I can't go on the mission," he insisted, and if Tolliver had been Uncle Jesse he'd be getting swatted for sassing his elders right now.

"No one's going on any mission, all right? Now just tell me whether you've got the wherewithal to hang onto a ladder for a few miles."

And, interestingly, flying back out over the trees with nothing under him but the wooden rung of a rope ladder swinging wildly with every change in direction was more painful than the fall had been. Made him cling to his perch like death was trying to rip him right out of the sky, made him sick to his stomach. By the time he hit the ground again some miles away from the rest of his squadron, he was ready to lie down and let himself be ministered to. The chopper landing, the pilot and co-pilot loading him in and taking off again, the flight and arrival back in Cam Ranh Bay were all lost to him.

Night must've come and gone somewhere along the way; he had vague memories of landing in the darkness and getting hustled from here to there before he was allowed to rest again. Some poking and shoving, and there had been a needle in his hip when he had a perfectly good shoulder that the injection could have gone into. By the time his head was clear again there was light leaking into the ward from somewhere, and meals were being served to those well enough to eat. Lunch, he was informed and it wasn't bad. Nowhere near what Daisy would have put in front of him under similar circumstances, but it had C-Rats beat by miles.

Within a couple of hours he got cut loose and sent to the barracks for a few days of rest. "Your sergeant did good by you," a pretty little nurse, Morales, told him. "You'll be all healed up in a couple of days. With those open sores out in the field, you could have gotten some pretty serious jungle rot."

But he'd stopped worrying about why he'd been sent back here. Last night he'd gotten the first real sleep he could remember since landing in this country back in January. He reckoned that once every three or four months a man needed some reasonable shuteye.

And a shower. He didn't get to see one of those too often these days; mostly the bunch of them scrubbed both their bodies and their clothes (and if they lacked for time, they washed them both at once without bothering to strip) in the rivers that sprawled across the wet land, and he couldn't swear whether, when they emerged, it was with less or more filth ground into their skin.

He'd apparently wrenched his knee when he'd made that graceless landing, but it wasn't bad. A little stiff from disuse, so after finding himself a bunk, he wandered off to what served as a gym to stretch it out. Watched as some of the guys played some three-on-three basketball and though he missed the game more than he wanted to admit, he didn't figure it was the best choice for his healing body. He found himself in front of the punching bags, practicing his left hook.

"Corporal," came from behind him sometime after he'd worked up a pretty good sweat. "At ease," followed as he tried to make up his mind between stopping the bag's momentum and saluting. Choose the wrong sequence and he could be on his backside again, and so soon after he'd gotten back up.

The voice belonged to Lieutenant Marcek, the man who had assigned him to Echo Company in the first place.

"Well now, you've got a pretty good swing there, boy. Duke, right?"

"Yes, sir." It was his responsibility, as the enlisted man, to answer his superior with respect. If he happened to sound a touch proud about his fighting abilities that was just coincidence.

"What's the other guy look like?"

"Sir?"

"You look a little worse for the wear." He wouldn't know. There weren't any mirrors in the barracks, and he hadn't thought too hard about what he looked like since the last time he'd kissed Miss Candy Dix back in the fall.

"Chute didn't open." That was the only part of the story that mattered, at least here in this place where most of the guys had probably never jumped out of anything higher than the low branches of a tree. Oh, he didn't begrudge the doctors, the clerks, the specialists that sat behind desks here. He could have chosen a different route for himself, maybe even one that kept him rooted to a base camp like this one. But he hadn't seen the sense in going halfway around the world just to be bored.

"In that case, you look pretty good. You ever been in the ring?"

"Yes, sir, back on Parris Island and Lejeune. Got me an unbroken streak of wins." All right, so that particular bit of pride had not been requested by the Lieutenant. Not that the man seemed disappointed in hearing it at all.

"Well then, we'll have to schedule you some ring time while you're here." Sounded like a fine idea to Luke.

Two days and two sparring sessions later, halfway logy from easy sleep, so clean he itched, sitting on the barrack steps cleaning his weapon for the dozenth time and wondering where the rest of his squadron was camped out, he looked up to see a beanpole of a private standing in front of him. Acne still breaking out across his cheeks, a perfect high and tight etched into his hair, uniform stiff and clean across his scrawny chest, and this was a boy who'd never been out in the field. Which was fine with Luke; no more than a kid, and short hair aside, this Marine reminded him of Bo. No one he wanted to picture lying in a bunker, watching green and orange tracers crisscross through the stars in the sky while listening to the rumbles of mortar rounds crashing to earth.

"Lieutenant wants to see you, sir."

He'd been cleared by the doctors to return to the field tomorrow. He didn't mind boxing for Marcek, but he wasn't exactly in a hurry to get himself grounded here, either. His squadron needed him.

"All right," he answered anyway, because he didn't have a choice. Shouldered his weapon and headed off to the air-conditioned cinderblock building where he'd find the Lieutenant, undoubtedly sitting behind his desk and shuffling files in his hands. Deciding some new arrival's fate, maybe trading some Cherry School kid into Tolliver's squadron and planning to keep Luke here to fight in that ring off the side of the gym.

"Duke," he got greeted, braced himself for it. "You got a phone call to make."

"Huh?" which wasn't proper military etiquette, but those words just hadn't made sense.

"Home. You get to call your folks and tell them you survived your little run-in with the ground. They got the cable, now they get the phone call."

"Wait," this was starting to make sense, the kind of sense that made his mouth go dry. "You done sent them a telegram? Saying what?" Oh, this was not a good thing. Not when neither of his cousins had ever shed the colorful imaginations of youth.

"That you were injured, but in good condition. Standard. Just like we told you we'd do back when you first landed here."

Oh he might have been told such a thing, he couldn't swear that he hadn't. Just that if he was, it must not have seemed terribly real, hadn't completely sunk in what it would mean. A telegram, most likely delivered to the door by Miss Tisdale, telling his family that he was hurt and half a world away where they couldn't see how minor it was—

"How long—" _have they been worrying_, but that part couldn't be fixed or changed. There were more important questions. "When can I call them?"

"Now. You've got five minutes to talk to them, that's it." And it would be about two in the morning, Hazzard time, but there was nothing he could do about that. He let himself be led to the telephone and taught how to use it.

* * *

"Uncle Jesse, you got to say 'over'!" It wasn't respectful; there was no 'sir' to be found anywhere in his words or his tone. But time was getting wasted, squandered away while their uncle stumbled over the radio code that Luke had tried to instruct him in at the beginning of the phone call. "Ah, Luke, er, your cousin wants to talk to you." It was giving up, giving in, flustered. Bo didn't care what it was, he wasn't looking a gift horse in the mouth.

"Luke, it's Bo. Over."

"_Ain't you slick_," seemed congratulatory, delivered with a smile, sounded hollow and far away, but it was Luke. "_Getting the phone from the old-timer_." Yes and no. The man in question was still within listening distance, frowning his rebuke at a boy who couldn't see him. Daisy was there, too, all three of them huddled together in the dim kitchen and wearing next to nothing. Exactly the sort of thing that would normally get his uncle to lecturing about how he wasn't running a bawdy house, but it had been the patriarch himself who had hollered for them to get themselves up and into the kitchen right now and no dawdling. "_You behaving yourself? Over_."

Over indeed. Tossing that question at him like it was nothing more than a how-do-you-do. As if he didn't know that there would be no privacy in this conversation.

"More or less," he answered. Long pause and then he remembered how it was that he'd come to be in possession of the phone in the first place. "Over." Regretted it instantly, because this wasn't what he wanted to talk about.

"_I'll bet_," his charming cousin answered back. "_Listen, I ain't got but a minute here. But like I told Jesse, I'm just fine. Ain't nothing but a few scratches_."

Sure would have been nice if Saturday's telegram could have said that:

THE SECRETARY HAS ASKED ME TO EXPRESS HIS DEEPEST REGRET THAT YOUR SON, CORPORAL LUKAS K. DUKE, USMC, WAS INJURED IN ACTION IN QUANG NAM PROVINCE IN VIETNAM X HE HAS BEEN TRANSFERRED TO BASE HOSPITAL IN GOOD CONDITION X IT AIN'T NOTHING BUT A FEW SCRATCHES X

He'd even have managed to maintain a sense of humor over the erroneous family relationship if the rest of the words had been as plain-spoken as what Luke was telling them now, if they hadn't made his female cousin scream in fear.

"_Nothing worse than what happens on the football field. And you know what that's like, over_."

Over, over. It was a signal, telling some operator between here and the other side of the world that a switch needed to be flipped so the conversation could be turned over. To him, and he didn't have the first idea what to say. Not about football, not in the middle of the night, not when he had less than a minute to say anything at all.

"I'm glad you're okay," was about the best he could do.

"We all are, honey," Daisy echoed, getting her two cents in.

"Over," he said, because no one else seemed to be talking.

"_Yeah, well, I'm fine so don't worry about it_." Frustration, like it was just so bothersome to have to talk about it, and Luke didn't have half a clue. He hadn't spent Saturday afternoon consoling Daisy, or Sunday morning in church asking for prayers for an ailing loved one. He hadn't had to answer questions from well-meaning but gossipy townsfolk, he hadn't been forced to listen to all the worst case scenarios get laid out by Hazzardites with active imaginations. "_I appreciate how regular you been writing, especially seeing as I ain't been real good about writing back. I reckon that if you could see your way clear to keeping it up even if you don't hear from me, I'd be much obliged, over_."

Typical Luke, so typical that there was nothing to do but smile and shake his head. "Yeah, we love you too, cuz." Because that, roughly translated, was what_ much obliged for the letters_ meant. "Over."

"_You best mind Uncle Jesse_," came the threat. "_Don't make me come back over there and whip your tail. Over_."

If it would work, if he could sass, cuss, disobey and defy Luke into being right here in front of him, if he could present his chin for the hitting or his tail and for the whipping, as long as it was at his cousin's hand, and that hand, along with the rest of that powerful body, could stay right here in Hazzard, he'd do it. He'd keep right on ignoring his schoolwork, he'd refuse to help with the planting season, he'd waste his days loitering on street corners if it could bring Luke back to beat him up for his bad behavior.

"Don't you worry, Luke. I'll make sure he behaves." A nudge on his shoulder from his female cousin, but his thoughts had tied his tongue in knots.

"Now—now—now," that was Uncle Jesse, jumping back into the final seconds of the call. "Luke, you don't worry about us one bit. You just stay safe."

"Over," Bo had to add, and he could just about feel his uncle's frustration at the infernal radio code. As if it was any trickier than the lingo they used on the CB.

"_I'll be just fine. Y'all just take care of each other—_" And, just like that, it was over, dial tone replacing his cousin's voice. No chance to say goodbye, but maybe that was for the best. Maybe he was just about dang sick of saying goodbye to Luke anyway.


	15. Part Two, Chapter Fourteen

**Chapter Fourteen**

_May 1972_

Ridiculous, it had been stupid and embarrassing, really. Catching a chopper to Saigon then a truck to Bien Hoa, tracking down the location where his squadron was enjoying a few days of stand-down activities, and the minute he saw that squared-off build, that sandy hair under that helmet with that hand-drawn calendar on it, days marked off with angular, backwards check marks, he'd become a sniveling mess. Arms around Ackley and halfway blubbering his thanks, and he didn't even rightly know why. Or, well, the gratitude was perfectly explainable, just not the blurting emotionality of it.

But Phil was a reasonably good guy, who didn't do anything worse than slap him on the back and tell him it was all right, that it wasn't anything that couldn't have gone the exact opposite way. And Tolliver had been quick to set Luke to work on digging out a bunker to spend the night in before the next day's mission would take them out into the field again.

– – – – – – – – – – –

"It's not that strange, you know." That was Tolliver, joining him under the canopy of a sapling, taking what little refuge they could from the constant drip of rain down their backs and into the already soupy stew in their C-Rat cans. Funny what a difference a few days could make. Unrelenting heat had been joined by incessant rain since they'd been dropped here in Binh Long. Flatlands, at least compared to the terrain they usually walked, and it had been largely cleared for farming. The sort of place that made Luke feel awfully exposed after months of trekking through thick woods. "To get a little emotional over someone saving your life."

The best defense he could think of was to look at Tolliver like he was nuts. So he tried it, hoped like hell it would work.

"Look, it's none of my business. As long as you do your job, I've got no problems with you."

"I'll do my job," he answered quickly, and just to try to put an impenetrable seal on this as the end of the conversation, he added, "sir." Couldn't swear that he, or anyone in the squadron, had much called Tolliver that before. This wasn't boot camp, steeped in ceremony and relying on false pretenses. There was no call to use formalities that gave the impression of respect, not when this Sergeant was genuinely admired by them all. Robert – his dog tags announced that as his first name, and now and then Luke had heard some of the senior guys call him by it – was exactly the kind of man that had earned what few stripes he had. Older, but not by as much as it sometimes seemed, and he'd been a cop back in Iowa. The Hazzard-raised boy had to guess that his policing skills could put Rosco Coltrane's to shame.

But Luke's deference to both the man and his rank earned him a snort.

"Too bad it's not nine-to-five, huh?" Somehow it managed to be sympathetic and slightly reprimanding at the same time. "You got to live here, Duke. I'm not saying you've got to embrace the guys like brothers. I've watched you enough to see how you hold yourself apart. Oh," before he could plead his case, "you're friendly enough. You get along with everyone, you don't start trouble. You're never going to be like Marino." Who had the kind of rash mouth that seemed to rankle some of the guys, but if you looked beyond that there was his huge heart, wide open and vulnerable. "But you're here with these guys day and night. There's nothing wrong with letting your guard down – just a little – around them."

There was nothing he really wanted to say to that and no more food in the can he'd been eating out of. Nothing to do but sit there and wait for Tolliver to run out of words. He was good at that, had sat through a lifetime's worth of tall tales being prattled out by Hazzard's oldsters.

"Luke," was such a strange thing to hear, his own first name. He'd been referred to by rank, surname, and a few unpleasant slurs since his earliest days in the Corps, and only Candy Dix and the leave he got back in Hazzard had interrupted that rhythm. "Anyone can see that you got people back at home that you love." And they weren't anyone's business, really. Not that he minded Tolliver bringing them up, exactly. The Sergeant was reasonably respectful when it came to this sort of thing. "You get more letters than any of the other guys." From Bo, mostly, page after page of that squared off half-print, half-script, rambling from news to weather reports, and then there were the juicy details of girls he'd dated, flirted with, or just daydreamed about. Daisy wrote shorter letters in her flowery cursive, and never forgot to tell him to be safe. Jesse's notes were succinct, usually informing him that the farm was coming along just fine, though he was missed. And all of them had to be read, memorized, then destroyed. No serviceman would be wise to let himself be captured by the enemy with that sort of personal information on him. Besides, unless papers were kept sealed in an ammo can, they'd rot out here in the humidity. His driver's license, which had been his pride and joy back home, was already a crumbling mess.

"You got them memorialized on your helmet. You're not like Marino," whose helmet bore crude drawings of battle and had the words _born to kill_ across the front. Luke was more partial to Meyers' helmet, which bore instructions to the enemy: Aim High. As long as an enemy bullet passed at least five feet and seven inches in the air, it would go over the scrawny guy's head. "Who acts like he doesn't care when he really does. And you were closer to Ackley than anyone else here. He missed you when you were back at base, you know. Oh, he managed just fine, but he's always been most partial to you. There's no reason for you to go avoiding him now, just because he saw you acting a little bit vulnerable."

"All right." He was a fool; he'd known that all along. Just maybe he was a slightly different kind of fool than he'd thought.

* * *

It was not, if anyone had cared to ask him, his fault. But no one had, so there was no explaining how he came to be getting rather severely scolded by one Enos Strate.

"Oh now, Enos," that was Daisy, working those same old charms on a boy who had loved her since nineteen sixty-five. "Couldn't you let it go, just this once?"

It wasn't a fair request, even Bo could see that, though he wasn't about to go saying so. Twice as much time at the Police Academy as any of the rest of the Sheriff's Department, including old Rosco himself, and poor Enos had still had wear down the powers-that-be for months on end before they'd gotten around to hiring him a couple of weeks ago. On a trial basis, working twelve hour days for nothing more than lunch money.

"Now Daisy," but it could, all of it, have been a lot worse. "He's underage," Enos reminded her.

Underage, and Bo wasn't even one of the celebrants here at this informal little party that had cropped up at the old quarry lake. Or, well, he had certainly jumped into the festivities with both feet, but it was really a graduation party. In a week Daisy could call herself free of Hazzard's school system forever, and it was just as unfair as it had always been that her five months of seniority over him translated to a whole year when it came to academia.

"And he's been drinking." But he wasn't drunk, he hadn't had half the amount it would have taken to get him there. Light-headed was about all he'd accomplished, and it could have been so much worse.

Sure, it would still be six months before the law said he could imbibe, but he'd been raised on moonshine, same as Enos, same as half the guys that had been here only minutes ago, before disappearing into the woods. Oh, Bo wasn't the only beer-breathed, barefooted boy standing around in wet jeans while Rosco's deputies scolded them and waved handcuffs in the air. But those who had been spectators to the final events of the gathering, well, they'd already been halfway to the tree line by the time the Duke boy had recognized that trouble had all but walked up and tapped him on the shoulder.

"But I ain't, Enos, and I could take him home," Daisy's skinny body, in those shorts she'd cut off for swimming in, her wet t-shirt clinging close to her skin, cozied up close to the deputy's. A high pitched giggle escaped the poor guy's mouth before he tried to turn stern again. "I promise, I'll take him straight to the farm, and won't let him bother nobody."

"Now Daisy, I'm in uniform, it ain't fitting for me to get wet." Funny, most any man that said those words, and truly believed them, would be leaning away from the dripping girl in front of him. Enos, if anything, seemed to be tipping towards her. "Besides," the breezy smile that had been dancing on the deputy's lips as he'd lost himself in the sparkling blue of Daisy's eyes tightened down into a frown when he glanced up at Bo. Took in those soaked jeans, torn at the knees, bare torso streaked with wet dirt, his hair undoubtedly sticking out in all directions, and that throbbing there in his cheek meant his eye was probably well nigh on its way to blackening. "He's been fighting."

And that, right there, was the part that really could have been a lot worse.

He hadn't come with intentions of doing anything more than a little swimming, a little sunning, and he might just have considered kissing one Melody-Ann Marshall, who'd caught his eye back when it first started roving. Here she was, all grown up and still pretty as a picture, just about to graduate from school. And though she'd never given the lowly Bo Duke even a moment of her attention, he'd figured that no harm could come from congratulating her, all personal-like, on her achievement.

But that had been nothing more than a pipe dream, blown away on the warm breeze when Ernie Ledbetter's snide comments came echoing off the rocks that surrounded the swimming hole. Bo set to swimming from one side to the other right then, mentally giving Ledbetter a chance to take back his words – whatever they had been because all he'd really heard was something about _soldier boy_ – before he got close enough to hit the guy. But it seemed that there was a perfectly good reason that old Ernie hadn't gotten promoted into Luke's grade after all. He wasn't very bright, still mouthing off about guys that were fool enough to get drafted (though Ledbetter's lottery number must have come up every bit as much as Luke's had, and Bo really would like to know what sort of deferral allowed the idiot to be crashing a graduation party instead of jumping out of helicopters with flimsy parachute equipment) and waste the best years of their life in the military, even as one very determined Duke boy pulled himself out of the water just ten feet away.

It could have been so much worse if he'd let those words keep on flooding out of Ledbetter's mouth instead of using his fist to shove them back in. Oh sure, the blood that came out of that already protruding lower lip had to be avenged, and Bo might even have kept his hands down to let one free blow come back at him. Just so no one could accuse him of having thrown a dirty punch.

Just one adrenalin-boosted heartbeat and it was a fistfight, fast and mean. Rolling over dirt and rocks, and he'd had more than one opponent, but it could have been so much worse. After all, Ernie's reflexes were slow to Bo's quick, so those extra hits and kicks that he got in just about evened the odds. Voices hollering around them, and it took him too long to recognize that not all of them were encouraging the fight, took him even longer to recognize that one of those voices belonged to Hazzard's newly constituted deputy.

After that it had been Enos pulling him off of Ernie's pathetic carcass, hollering about being ashamed of Bo Duke's behavior. _What would your Uncle Jesse say?_ Those were the sort of words that got hurled by elderly widows, not young deputies who used to run moonshine only a few short years ago.

"It was just a little misunderstanding. Enos, please." Daisy's big blue eyes batted at the deputy, and Bo wasn't even sure the poor fellow could maintain his balance, much less his resolve to drag one filthy Duke boy downtown to face charges of some sort or other.

"Well, I suppose it ain't up to me. I mean, I ain't seen him drinking, exactly. All I seen was the fight. So I guess it's up to Ernie there, whether he wants to press charges."

And there was no way Bo would let his sweet cousin go sidling up to that monster and pleading his case for him.

"If he files charges against me, I'm filing them right back."

"Bo!" Daisy was only trying to help, but she needed to stay out of this part, which included a certain amount of shuck and jive.

A questioning eyebrow at Ledbetter – _you really want to do this?_ – and a prayer that the fool would take into consideration that Bo was technically a minor. Sure, he wasn't supposed to be drinking, but he also wouldn't get more than a slap on the wrist, whereas the ever-charming Ernie was old enough to—

"Why would I file changes against that little gnat? He didn't hurt me none," sealed it. Bo would have to remember to thank Ernie. Some fine day, well into the future, when they were both older than Uncle Jesse.

It could have been so much worse, and none of it was his fault, but Daisy didn't care about that as she lit into him while he slumped in the passenger side of the pickup for the bumpy ride home. Non-stop words like only she could ever come out with, Bo-Duke this and Bo-Duke that and didn't he know that there were better ways to handle loud-mouths like Ernie Ledbetter? And hadn't she told him that he could come along on this little excursion if and only if he behaved himself?

There was no smirk on her lips, no rough fingers turning his face from side to side to assess the damage, no half-grudging admiration that he'd held his own out there. There were just lecturing, frustrated words, and when they finally subsided long enough, he mumbled—

"I miss Luke."

"Me too, sugar." Silence, and for the half a minute that it lasted, Bo wasn't alone. It was almost enough to make a man want to hug his kin close, maybe share with her just how miserable he'd been feeling. Just that long, and then it started up again. "But that ain't no excuse for you going and getting into a fight at my graduation party! Not to mention getting caught, and what do you plan to tell Uncle Jesse? You ain't going to be able to hide that bruised face from him, and even if you could, you know this story is going to make its way around town. Just wait until Sunday, Bo Duke, when you're the talk of the church…"

There was nothing to do but snicker, shake his head, and wait for that head of steam to boil down to a low simmer. After that he'd work with her to get their stories straight.

* * *

"Bucko, you've got to put in for it now." There might have been a certain amount of wisdom in this foolishness. After all, there usually was. "And ask for Bangkok. It's going to take them awhile to get around to you."

"Bangkok." That was Meyers, with a derisive snort at Marino's suggestion. "Why would you go there, when you could go to Hawaii?" Which was as close to The World as men in their positions could get, and it wasn't terribly surprising that Meyers would lobby for it. "That's where I'm going. Why would anyone go to Bangkok? They don't even speak English there."

"One word: girls. Right, Duke?"

Well, girls were a fine idea. But Bangkok, or leave _anywhere_ other than Hazzard, only seemed like a halfway good idea.

He'd done what Tolliver suggested, he'd gotten friendlier with the guys. He'd explained his damned helmet, he'd talked about home. He'd earned the nickname Plowboy, and pretended to think the rest of the squadron was creative in calling him that.

And he'd made the mistake of finding himself in the middle of a discussion about R&R, and how he'd best get on with requesting his, or he'd get stuck with Tokyo. And even Ackley, the oldest and most settled of the enlisted guys, didn't think much of that choice.

"Can't have no fun in Tokyo." And Ackley, being an Alabama boy, born and raised not four hours away from Hazzard County, knew what fun was. These city boys, like Meyers and Marino, didn't have the first idea. "Go to Sidney if you're worried about English."

But the language didn't bother Luke much. Heck, Thai or Japanese or even Vietnamese was only a mite stranger to him than the New York English that came bounding out of Meyers' mouth.

"Maybe I'll take it in-country." If he couldn't go home, at least he could take a cheap trip, one that would leave as much of his earnings as possible intact.

"Can't do that, Bucko," Marino informed him. "Not allowed."

"He's right," Ackley confirmed when Luke turned to catch his eye. It was standard operating procedure to doubt Marino's loud declarations until they were proven factual. The boy didn't so much lie as make up his own truth.

"Well, then, I ain't going to worry about it for now. I'll figure it out later." But he'd tried that approach to ending the conversation already.

"You can't wait, Duke." Horn, the California surfer-boy, had mostly kept quiet; then again, he'd already had his R&R. In Hawaii, just like Meyers was planning. But that was a long, expensive flight from here, and since there was no way his kin could meet him there, Luke didn't have any real strong compulsion to take his leave there. "You got to get in line or they'll decide for you."

"Tokyo," Marino reminded him. "Boring."

"Fine." Yes, there had been certain benefits to the way he'd stood apart from the rest of them until recently. Like how he didn't have to make public decisions like this. Sitting in a bunker in Binh Long, in an encampment with a bunch of other Marines, watching brightly lit tracers cross the sky, hearing the shells smash into the land well to the north of them in An Loc. In a few days Tolliver's boys would be heading up toward those fireworks to try to work out the next movements of the North Vietnamese Army in a battle that had already gone on for close to six weeks. Maybe they needed something to distract them. Why it had to be Luke's R&R plans, he didn't know. "I'll put in for Taipei." It was just about the only place that had neither been advocated for nor derided. It would put an end to the conversation.

"Man, why Taipei?" Or not.

But there had been benefits, too, to the way he'd started to open up to the guys. Like his quieter, more private conversations with Ackley.

"Don't," the senior man had told him when Luke'd mentioned the notion of doing two Vietnam tours to get shed of the military all the faster. Sure, it would mean twenty-six months here, interrupted by one month back in the United States, but all told, he'd be done with his obligation by the spring of 1974. "It seems like a good idea, but it ain't. The more time you spend here, the more you change. I don't halfway recognize myself anymore."

"Well, I didn't know you before, but you seem like a good enough guy now." Uncle Jesse had raised him to defend his friends, even if it was against their own demons.

"Good." A rough laugh. "Well that don't mean much to me anymore. You know, when I left home I had me a fiancée. She done broke up with me in a letter. 'You've changed,' was her main reason, and I couldn't argue with her. I ain't the same as I used to be."

"She was a fool," Luke announced. "Leaving a man because he got sent to war." Of course, he'd left Candy Dix for pretty close to the same reason, but he'd never claimed to be anything other than a fool about that.

"I don't know," Phil had mused. "I reckon if I make it out of this tour alive, all I want is to be rich, then take my money and go off somewhere where I ain't never gonna have to work or worry. I just ain't figured out the getting rich part."

"You and me both." If Flat Rock, Alabama was anything like Hazzard, they'd both be dirt poor until the day they died. But Dukes didn't expect any different, never aspired to more than holding onto what they already had: each other and the land that had been passed down to them through the generations.

"Take the two years of non-combat duty, Duke. You'll wind up in Germany, or Guam, or maybe even the States. It'll pass before you know it, and you'll be back home, halfway sane. You don't want to stay in Vietnam for another tour and end up like me."

Which Luke couldn't make heads or tails of, because as far as he could tell, being like Ackley meant he'd save some young Marine's life someday, and there was nothing wrong with that. But he'd think about it more when the time came a lot closer for him to have to make the decision.

There were also the more questionable benefits to being tight-knit with the rest of the squadron. Like the opportunity to shove one of the suddenly-perpetuating, large and remarkably ugly beetles down the back of Marino's uniform shirt, just to watch the tough guy squeal louder than a paining pig. And the fool's fine solution to the problem of ever-larger bugs sharing the tight space of his shirt with him was to stop bothering to get fully dressed every morning. Which only meant that someone had to be brave enough to slip a squirming beetle down the back of the man's pants, and Luke, by virtue of being the one who'd started the stupid game in the first place, got elected. If the process wasn't fun, the result, at least, was worth it.

And finally there was the way he got his second nickname, Turkey-boy, which was a misnomer all around, but there was no telling the guys that.

Drawing watch duty in the lowlands left Luke a lot less comfortable than when they were in the familiar mountains, where he could figure out the direction that any approaching enemy would have to take. With nothing but elephant grass and a hole in the dirt to protect the six of them from danger, Luke found himself flipping the safety off his rifle at the slightest sound. And if that noise persisted, as it had one night, well, he felt justified in sounding the alarm. That Meyers roused with a holler only heightened the sense of danger, and when the tension built high enough, there came a moment when Luke's finger squeezed the trigger. More than once, and when the morning dawned and all they could find was a dead quail, at least Luke could say that his aim had been good.

"Duke shot a turkey!" Marino had chirped with a touch too much glee for a guy who was likely to get a snake down his back if he didn't settle down.

"Ain't a turkey," Luke had pointed out reasonably. "It's a pheasant." Not enough meat on it to even consider cooking up for a meal, and he could hear his Aunt Lavinia nagging in his head about the waste of what he'd done, but it hadn't been on purpose.

"It ain't even close to Thanksgiving, Turkey-boy!" had been Marino ignoring rationality, and the name was so ridiculously stupid that it stuck. On and off.

But overall, his squadron were a good enough bunch of guys, and if they knew that he'd hollered for his Uncle Jesse in the frightened moments after his sudden impact with the earth thanks to a failed chute, and if they had come to understand that it was the equivalent of having called out for his mommy, they left him alone about that part.

And they'd also generously shared the things that they had. Like the snapshots that Horn had been taking since the day Luke had met him, and if it didn't make any sense that the guy would want to document his time here, when they got those rare stopovers at base camps and the pictures were developed, they were pretty interesting to look at. And, more importantly, when Horn was kind enough to give him one or two in which he was featured, digging a bunker or goofing off with Ackley, they were things that could be sent home to prove, better than words ever could, that he was just as fine as he'd tried to tell them he was in that too-short, censored phone call.

If being Turkey-boy was the price he had to pay for being able to give that small gift to his family, he could live with that. While he figured out whether a salamander placed in Marino's helmet would be capable of crawling out before the fool went to put it on.


	16. Part Two, Chapter Fifteen

**Chapter Fifteen**

_June 1972_

Like an oasis in a desert, Luke's letters came to him on paper crinkled with moisture that never quite seemed survive the trip across the ocean. By the time he got them they were as dry and brittle as the summer heat that had begun sucking the life out of the Georgia landscape and the critters that roamed it, from squirrels to humans. One parachute-jump-gone-wrong aside, it appeared that the Vietnam of his cousin's experience was not nearly as harrowing as the newsmagazines in the racks at Rhuebottoms would have liked its readers to believe. What with the letters describing bugs of varying sizes making their way into articles of clothing, and if Luke's current life didn't quite sound fun, there was at least a companionable feeling to it.

Or maybe it was those photographs, nagging at his thoughts again. After they'd been passed hand-to-hand, with Daisy getting slightly dreamy-eyed over some of those strangers in uniforms that flanked his cousin in most of them, and Jesse tsking over lost weight, they wound up under Bo's bed. Safe there, like memories he wasn't sure he wanted to have. Where Luke went, he'd always followed and sometimes the images in those photos, of Luke standing in an unfamiliar landscape with his arm around a man that Bo had never even met, would just feel all wrong. Like it ought to be him there too, in dirty fatigues with a military-thin frame, shoulder to shoulder with the cousin that had never been more than a few miles away from him before.

Instead, when he could get away from the farm, he went to those same places that he and Luke had always haunted. There had been a few days after his transgressions out at the quarry, not to mention the report card that tattled about the thin margin by which one Bo Duke had passed his junior year, when his uncle swore backwards and forwards that he was just the sort of walking trouble that couldn't be trusted to leave the property. But that had only lasted about a week before he'd been sent to town to get some screen to replace what kept getting blown out of their back porch. Seemed like it would have been a good idea to just give up and leave it open, but the old man liked to sit out there in summer, and the mosquitoes just weren't invited to join him on the rickety swing.

After that he got trusted to go off on his own more and more, though most days he had to borrow the pickup if he wanted to get anywhere. Daisy was looking for work; not even two weeks out of school and the girl was ready to tie herself down for eight hours a day all over again. Anyway, work was a respectable thing to be seeking, so she got Luke's car without even hardly asking, while Bo was left figuring out how many times he could ask for the pickup in one week without getting told that he needed to be putting up a new fence line. Around the whole county.

Somewhere just over a year ago, Luke had decided that staying in school would be good for him. Bo couldn't say he understood the logic, other than the notion that he'd play sports and that that, somehow or other, would be enough. Because Luke had enjoyed playing games of strategy mixed with brute strength, and he'd made friends on the teams. And logic followed that if the older Duke boy had come away from school with buddies like Dobro Doolan and Derek Brody, then the younger would find two or three of his own.

Instead, he went to Cooter's, where he knew the older guys would eventually find themselves. Because what was Luke's was his, from hand-me-down clothes to recycled friends. And because some of his best times had been spent bickering with bunch of them, even if it was Luke's cooler head that usually kept words from turning into blows.

"Ain't you got nothing better to do?" was the mechanic's usual greeting, but the truth was that he didn't so he just shrugged and picked up a screwdriver or a wrench and made himself useful. He didn't get paid, but he worked plenty, and it was funny how he wasn't the one who was entitled to Luke's car.

Although Friday nights he could usually finagle rights to the Falcon, what with there being no work anywhere in town to be found once the sun went down. Well, other than at the roadhouse, and Jesse would pitch a fit if anyone ever suggested that his sweet and innocent niece get a job there. Though Bo could testify, if anyone ever wanted to ask him, to the fact that his girl cousin had herself a nasty right cross, and could probably handle whatever the Boar's Nest could throw at her. But no one asked him and no one suggested that Daisy ought to go working for Boss Hogg, just as half-dressed as the rest of the girls that worked there under his occasionally lecherous eye, so the Falcon still got a chance to race most Friday nights.

Dobro was threatening to get married and only showed up about half the time, but Brody and Cooter could be counted on to let themselves be trounced by one Bo Duke on a semi-regular basis. They weren't as much fun as they could have been, though, refusing to go rile Sheriff Coltrane from his evening doze to make it a real chase. So daring the law to come after him, to threaten his safety and his livelihood, had to wait until those nights when Jesse dropped Sweet Tilly's keys on the table in front of him and mumbled the name of one customer or another to whom he was to deliver.

He always waved off all offers of assistance, and by now Jesse stopped coming out to hide in his white truck along some tree-lined section of the delivery route, in case he needed to run interference.

"Luke was right," the old man allowed. "You're a better driver than him."

Which wasn't true at all. He was much, much worse than his cousin, whose primary goal had always been to get the goods to the customer. Oh, old Luke might have welcomed a little fun along the way, but his purpose in doing the run never wavered. Whereas Bo was all about getting himself chased – it hardly seemed worthwhile to stay up until the wee hours of the morning unless there was some excitement involved – and if that meant he had to carry booze from one place to another, well, so be it.

So races were ridiculously tame in comparison, but they had their benefits. Because afterward, whereas Luke used to just take him home, the other guys went out for a beer or two to cool them down from the hot road. Which meant that, while Daisy wasn't spending her Friday nights at the Boar's Nest, Bo was. Oh, he couldn't get himself served (and while he'd drunk after Luke many a time, he wouldn't consider picking up the filthy mechanic's mug and sipping from it, even if the guy was easily enough distracted), but he could do the one thing that he actually missed when school closed for the summer: he could enjoy himself some female company.

"He's just a kid," Dobro would announce to the buxom blonde who'd come to snuggle all nice and cozy with him.

"He's engaged," Bo would counter. "Which one of us would you rather be with?" And it wasn't a hard choice for the girl, because even if she was a few years older than Bo, he was available, and then there was his pretty face and blonde charm. Worked every time.

And Jesse would tan his hide if he knew all the particulars of what he did after dark on Fridays, but the Duke boys had always spent that night out and about, and so long as he kept his nose clean (and didn't get it bloodied in one of the frequent brawls that broke out at the roadhouse) he'd keep on being left to himself.

To spend time with friends, and girls. And to be just as lonely as he had been the day Luke left.

* * *

This time he didn't holler for Jesse. There wasn't time.

It wasn't a jump, it was a perfectly routine chopper landing in a cleared zone. That turned out to be hot when the first snipers' bullets pinged off the metal skin of the helicopter. But half the guys were already on the ground, so there was nothing else to do but follow them. Because Marines never, ever left each other behind. And he didn't have a problem with that, it was perfectly ethical and reasonable – in the abstract. But hopping off a helicopter skid _into_ the line of enemy fire, well, a man had to be crazy to do it.

But crazy went around in Vietnam like the whooping cough did back home, so he fit right in with the rest of them. His 'brothers,' that's what Ackley and Horn, the first ones out of the Huey, were supposed to be. They weren't, he knew the difference between buddies and brothers, even if he'd only had a brother for two weeks before he'd been killed in that hospital fire. After that he'd only had cousins, though Bo and Daisy meant more to him than any of the other five guys in his squadron ever would. And he really didn't want to die before seeing them again.

So he ducked low into the elephant grass, willing himself to disappear as he fired back at an equally invisible target. Belly down with the red mud soaking into their uniforms like blood, Tolliver shouting orders that couldn't be understood over the sound of rifles, and that his scrambling brain wouldn't have been able to make any sense out of anyway.

Drunk, he could remember the first time he achieved true inebriation. The way everything got too loud, too wild, how time slipped and dragged and none of it seemed real or mattered a whole heck of a lot. Not, that was, until the crack of the whip set him straight, like the sound of an automatic weapon ought to be doing for him now. He needed to sober up quick, except he hadn't had a single intoxicating drop, so there was no antidote.

"Ten o'clock, ten o'clock, ten o'clock!" Was that the time or the location, and where, exactly was noon? Last he knew it was dusk and it was hard to say now whether it was the descending darkness or the rain falling thickly through the air that made it hard to see, to know where things were and whether the danger was really as close as it felt. Echoes and splashes and Tolliver calling for the radio.

Quiet, for a minute or ten and he couldn't be sure which, but no one and nothing moved. Cold rain, steamy air and there was an urge to close his eyes because when he opened them again, maybe all of this would turn out to have been nothing more than a nightmare. The kind he'd never been known to have, but there had to be a first time for everything. And if he crawled into Bo's bed for comfort instead of the other way around, even though he was far, far too old to get away with such a thing, it would probably be forgiven, just this once.

Then it all started to move again, sounds and bright flashes that much closer.

"Backup's coming," came from his left. Tolliver, and either that was supposed to be a comfort to the six of them, or a threat to the unknown numbers of enemy out there. _When?_ Luke might have wanted to ask, but there was no time for that.

"There, there, there, there," he heard and in the last of the light he could see the long blades of grass swaying back and forth. So he opened up fire in that direction, but nothing stopped, not the shooting or the movement. It would figure that he could hit a pheasant in a blackout, but would miss something as large as a man when there was still light in the sky.

They couldn't stay here. The grass would hide them for only so long and was useless when it came to protection. They had to move, even if it meant retreat, even if it meant running across acres of nothingness to find the shelter of something more rigid and bullet resistant than grass. He moved.

"Duke! Get down!" But it was too late, there was pain in his shoulder, and he went over onto his backside, his weapon firing off into the air.

Meyers was there before he had half a chance to do more than grip at what hurt him, then bring back bloody fingers.

"Shrapnel," Meyers announced after shoving his shirt away the area in question. "Not bad," and by then Luke's brain had settled back down from the immediate shock of the pain, enough to realize that his buddy was right about that part.

"I'll be fine," he answered back, because by then there was hollering over to their left, something about Tolliver and Meyers was needed double-quick.

Somewhere around the time that Luke figured out that his left shoulder wasn't critical to firing his weapon, an illumination round got fired off from somewhere. Glowing beacon, mixed light and shadows, constant movement, hard to figure out what part of it was illusion and whether it would help them find the enemy, or help the enemy find them. But eerie cast of light aside, it meant that help had arrived. The six of them weren't alone anymore.

Like being drunk, he couldn't judge distance or time, direction got lost to the crazy spin of the world with each illumination round that got fired off.

The night passed in a hazy buzz of bursting gunfire, cold rain and a deep, aching pain that was enough to keep him alert. He fired his weapon when he thought he had a target, and otherwise just stayed low and alive. At some point or other he caught sight of Horn, maybe twenty yards away, flickering and flashing shadows crisscrossing him as he lay on his belly, sighting at nothing through the scope of his rifle. Luke couldn't have explained the fool risk he took, crawling over to be closer to another human being, not a brother, but a familiar body all the same.

"How bad off are you?" the other Marine asked, first time he'd been directly spoken to in the eternity since Meyers had left him to move on to more pressing problems.

"It ain't nothing," he answered back, and it wasn't. By then he was so numbed by hours of lying in the cold mud while needles of rain poked at his skin, the percussive pops in the dark of night, and the fear that had ebbed and flowed in him like the ocean lapping at the beaches back on Parris Island, and he could believe it was no more than a scratch. But he reckoned a few stitches to sew it up wouldn't be a bad idea, assuming he got out of here with his life.

Like being drunk, the sounds changing and distorting and he didn't know, couldn't be sure until a distant voice confirmed it for him.

"Incoming!"

Big shells came then, mortar rounds that made what he'd spent dark hours listening to seem like nothing worse than a fireworks display on the Fourth of July. Spotlight-bright and though he couldn't see through its glare he could hear the steady thrum of rotors.

"Ours or theirs?" he asked, but he'd bet good money that Horn didn't even hear him, and surely couldn't give an accurate answer even if he had. Too much happening all at once, and the voice, when it came, buzzed in his ears like an overdose of moonshine whiskey.

"Come on, Duke, move!" Familiar, it was Ackley's, so he rose into a crouch and waddled drunkenly toward the chopper. Inside and helping the other guys load up packs and weapons and the radio, and that last thing that came in it was heavy. The cant of the chopper as it rose into the air was every bit as inebriated as Luke's drunken relief. Until his brain caught up with what his eyes already knew, had figured out all on their own before the squadron had even become airborne.

Tolliver. The heaviest thing they had loaded in was their Sergeant. Who was in no condition to load himself, and Luke didn't want to look at him anymore. Couldn't stop, couldn't force his eyes away, and he sobered up right quick. Marines never left their buddies behind. Even if it was just to bring them home so they could be buried.

* * *

There was no middle of the night phone call this time. Just the telegram, and then a couple of weeks later, there was a letter. Seemed like the Marine Corps had decided that the Dukes had learned the drill after the first time, and they might even have been right about that. Daisy didn't shriek or get weak in the knee, though her eyes did go wide and they might have been a bit red come dinner time. Jesse didn't bluster and bluff his way through trying to keep his kids calm, and if Bo counted the beats in his chest just to be sure they were normal, steady, and strong like Luke had always been, he did it calmly, without too much worry.

The letter that came later was from Luke, and detailed his injury. Shrapnel in his upper arm, and it seemed pretty likely that the origin was organic. Shattered bamboo, and it was really hard to get scared about his cousin getting attacked by a plant, even if Luke did say it had happened during contact with the enemy.

Anyway, it couldn't have been anything too serious. Another couple of letters came the next day, and one was addressed to him alone. Told him all about base camp, the tight quarters of the barracks, where sleeping took place in bunk beds lining the walls on either side.

_I know you always wanted us to have bunks, but it ain't exactly a picnic,_ Luke wrote. _You always figured on sleeping up top, but the way you toss and turn, you'd roll out in a heartbeat. That's exactly happened to the guy that's sleeping above me right now..._

Who also, apparently, snored like thunder, and Luke's heart didn't seem precisely broken that the guy hit the floor before he even knew what had happened to him.

_Base camp ain't like being out in the field. It's more social. You get to hang out with other guys some of the time, and go to the club, which is a dump that makes the Boar's Nest look like Park Avenue. _

So his cousin couldn't be hurt too bad, because going to that sort of a dive was strenuous work. Although it wasn't the half of Luke's next revelation.

_We're here for a couple of weeks. They call it standing down, and we're getting to do it for a while. We still got work to do, but it's more like chores. You get it done, and then you can have some fun. For me, that means boxing. There's a couple of Marines they want me to fight first, and if I beat those guys, I get to go up against the Navy champion. It's like entertainment for the rest of the guys. They can't watch T.V. or anything, but they can watch me beat the tar out of some poor fool that thinks he can fight._

Well, whatever it was that had cut into his cousin's arm sure hadn't damaged his confidence one bit.

Though that part got followed by the only thing that grabbed any of Bo's concern.

_It might be fun for the other guys to watch me box, but it's good for me, too. In the ring I can take out all my frustrations on the other guy, and I don't got to carry them around with me no more._

Because his cousin was smart, he knew a lot of words, how to use them properly and what they meant. Except when it came to words that explained how he felt. _Frustration_ might just as easily mean rage or fear or sadness or just plain exhaustion.

And if Luke were home right now, Bo could gauge the coolness of those ice-blue eyes, measure the way they squinted down, watch for the muscles to tighten in his cousin's jaw and across his shoulders, and he'd know. But from this distance he had nothing more reliable than words to go on, and although he might have wanted to sit right down and pen a letter in return, carefully fishing for the deeper meaning of this frustration that his cousin apparently felt, well—

"Boy," Uncle Jesse hollered through the screen door to where Bo sat on the splintered boards of the rough-hewn porch, pocket knife open and digging dirt out from under his nails while Luke's latest letter lay across his right knee. "Best you see to watering that crop line."

Well, he couldn't engage in what would likely be pointless efforts to tease the accurate words out of his cousin right now anyway. Not with chores waiting on him.


	17. Part Two, Chapter Sixteen

**_Author's Note: _**_I am indebted to so many different websites and books and even vets that I used to know for the information that I used throughout this story_._ Too many to properly name, honestly, but there is one that taught me a little something about R&R, and since it is genuinely intended to help fanficcers, I'm going to point those of you that are interested to it: tourofdutyinfo . com (slash) Notebook (slash) Essay4-R&R . htm (take out the spaces and use actual slashes).  
_

_As always, I don't own, borrowed most of Luke's experiences somewhere from canon, don't earn, don't mean harm. Do love feedback, do thank everyone for reading.  
_

* * *

**Chapter Sixteen**

_July 1972_

It was a stupid, stupid thing to complain about, and he knew it. Like clockwork – on a clock that kept time backwards and chimed at intervals that only it could understand – his R&R orders came through. Just one week after they'd been sent out on another mission, Ackley newly promoted to Sergeant and the leader, with two brand new cherries to fill out the squadron. Everyone still smarting from what they'd lost and Marino questioning every decision that got made. He really should have been where he could help his buddy transition to his new responsibilities but here he was, in clean khakis, with newly shorn hair (because no Marine could go abroad looking as scruffy as he had – at least that was what Lieutenant Marcek had told him before ordering him off to the barber, and it was awfully funny how he hadn't had a haircut since January, and it hadn't mattered one bit to anyone so long as he was out in the field risking his life) on a flight to Taipei.

Maybe it was some sort of weird cosmic punishment (or reward, because if he could somehow manage to put his sense of responsibility aside for more than a minute at a time, he'd have to admit that hanging over the Pacific Ocean in a steel casing held up by nothing stronger than air currents was a heck of a lot safer than being down there on the ground, walking point for a bunch of testy guys under new leadership) for the way he'd skipped over all the things he didn't want to remember about that battle in the elephant grass when he wrote home. Sparing his family the worry, at least that was what he'd told himself, and it was mostly true. So what if he'd also had no desire to write any of it down, to document it like it was some ancient battle out of The Iliad, for his kin to study like school kids. Besides, the men who had been there had themselves a tacit agreement not to talk about it – any of it, at all, ever.

Landing in Taiwan meant getting shuttled around by the military, lectured on appropriate behavior by a Sergeant that was far more fussy than any Duke – including his Aunt Lavinia – had ever been, given rented civilian clothes that hung loosely on his frame though he was sure he'd given the clerk his correct size, and finally set free to find his hotel room on a street that looked the same as every other street. Crowded beyond anything he'd ever seen in Atlanta, juts and angles like no city ought to have, and street names that made no sense to him, but there it was, a Holiday Inn. Brightly lit lobby with men in crisp, clean, white uniforms, air conditioned and all of it was so shiny that it just about hurt his eyes. Got sent to the third floor where, he was assured, other military men were staying, found his room, opened the door to be assaulted by the dueling odors of cleaning solvents and dirty ash trays. Funny how the stench of the smokers who had occupied this room before him was the most familiar part of the experience.

Dropped his duffel bag filled with someone else's clothes on the chair, and flopped onto the bed. Sunk down so far into the mattress that he figured he might never get back out, and reached for the telephone. Sure, he didn't plan on spending much money on this semi-forced vacation, but he had every intention of splurging on one long and uncensored call to Hazzard County, Georgia.

One, two, three rings, a click and then, "_Who in the world would call a man before he's had his morning coffee?_" came at him loud and clear though the words were not spoken directly into the phone. Made him smile, made his backside twinge in memory of past whippings that followed on exactly that tone of voice.

"_I got it, Uncle Jesse_," and that was sweet Daisy, soothing the danger right out of the situation like she always had. "_Hello_." Such a small thing, just a voice in his ear, echoing slightly over the long distance lines, and he closed his eyes to see the angled morning sun casting beams through the dancing dust particles that could never be banished from the air in summer, could smell aroma of Jesse's coffee, dark and strong enough to jumpstart a hibernating bear, brewing on the stove.

"Good morning, sweetheart," was almost like habit, as if he was coming back into the kitchen after morning chores to find her there, melting butter in the old skillet, hand out for the eggs he'd just collected.

"_Luke! What happened, sugar, are you hurt again?_" Well, if that wasn't enough to make a man pop right out of his reverie and flinch in sympathetic pain. "_Over?_"

Took a couple of minutes of reassurances – interrupted by Jesse's queries from behind her as well as several unnecessary_ overs_ to get her to relax enough to understand where he was and accept his congratulations on her recent graduation. This led rather seamlessly to a conversation about most of the town's gossip, including the unbelievable news that Enos Strate had finally managed to get himself hired as a Hazzard County Deputy, and that the whole town was abuzz with the news that old Hard Luck Jones had gotten busted – again – by the feds.

"_Luke_," she suddenly interrupted herself. "_Promise me you'll be more careful_." It was the kind of thing that had to be laughed at, or else he'd be overwhelmed with guilt over dangers he didn't control.

"Daisy, honey—" he tried, but he should have known better.

"_You promise me, Luke Duke. I don't want to hear that you've got even a scratch. You understand me?_"

What else could he do? "Yes, Ma'am." Duke women were known to beat the daylights out of anyone who disobeyed them.

Close call, but surviving that meant he got to talk to Uncle Jesse, who couldn't stop fussing over _his boy, his boy_, and how happy he was to hear from him. Catch in his voice sounded almost like he had one of those specks that seemed to find their way into his eyes whenever he was proud of or worried about his kids.

"_You really all right, boy?_" came along when the man got beyond the words that were really just a poor substitute for gathering him into a bear hug anyway. "_You said it wasn't that bad, but then you was recuperating for so long—_"

"I'm fine," he interrupted. Because what rose up in him was a powerful urge to unburden himself on his uncle, to confess how he'd spent a night shooting into the darkness with no knowledge of whether he'd killed a man, that he'd lain through dark hours on his belly in a cold rain just waiting to die and in the end he'd survived, but he'd lost someone important to him. Had the strongest desire to talk about the many ways in which Tolliver had kept him alive for nearly six months, and that the man didn't deserve to die out in a muddy field of elephant grass, life slowly seeping from him as they waited through a long night for help to arrive. But that shoulder that he longed to bury his head in, those wide, gnarled, calloused hands that would tangle in his hair, if he had any, were thousands of miles away. And there was no point in letting his family know the sort of danger he'd been in, not when they couldn't show up in a white pickup loaded with oil and firecrackers as a diversion to help him escape. War wasn't the illegal liquor business, no matter how many superficial similarities it bore.

"How's business?" he asked, because he just didn't have the fortitude to withstand his uncle's worried inquiries.

"_We're hanging in there, Luke. Don't you worry none. Got us some garden crops out there that we can sell in case the corn don't work out_." In case the liquor business stumbled, one way or another, into hard times. Code talk, because even if the call wasn't censored by the Marines, it was most likely monitored on the Hazzard side by pretty little Maybelle Tillingham sitting at the switchboard with no one else's calls to eavesdrop on this early in the morning.

"No trouble with old Harvey Essex?"

A sigh from Jesse. "_Your cousin is a fine, fine driver, boy. If he ever runs into Harvey out there, I never even hear about it._"

"Told you," Luke bragged. "Where is Bo, anyways?"

"_Lollygagging through his chores, I imagine. He'll be back directly_."

"How's he doing, Jesse?" Letters from the boy were all over the place, rambling from girls to driving to the stupidity of school, but never lingering on any one topic long enough for Luke to get a feel for what was going on in that blonde head of his cousin's.

"_Bo? Why he's the spitting image of what you was like at his age._" Banging in the background, the door slamming, and mumbled complaints that the hens were surly this morning and Bonnie Mae didn't much want to be milked. Bo, just as lacking in subtlety as he had ever been, loudly announcing that he was done with morning chores. "_Just exactly like you was_."

Luke winced. "That bad, huh? Put him on; I'll talk to him."

* * *

He could get hung up all over again on how unfair it all was. That Daisy was free and he wasn't, that Luke had been gone for a year now and fools like Ernie Ledbetter had nothing better to do than stay in Hazzard and look for fights on otherwise sunshine-perfect days at the lake.

He could, but it would be a wasteful thing to do on a morning when he could smell sausages being kept warm for him in the oven, while the sun stretched her glowing fingers into the house to turn everything a warm yellow, when he was in his own bedroom, door shut, with Luke's voice in his ear.

"_All right. Exactly what kind of trouble have you been up to?_" was scolding mixed with pride from the man halfway across the world. In Taipei, wherever that was (and it wasn't his fault that school lessons on Asia had been so boring that he'd forgotten most of them) in a hotel with a week to do nothing but enjoy himself in pure Duke-boy fashion, but the first thing he had done was to call home.

"Nothing much," he drawled back. "Just the usual." Beating their friends at races wasn't any trouble at all, really. Running moonshine hardly even got his heart rate up anymore. "Hey Luke," and it was like whispering across their darkened room to a cousin no further than arm's length away. "What's it really like? I mean, how close do you get to the enemy?" War films, and he'd watched his share, showed everything from knife fights to heavy artillery being fired from what looked like miles away. No way to get perspective from a movie screen.

"_Bo—_" sounded tired, slightly annoyed. "_It—it's like running 'shine. If you're doing your job right, you only see them from far away, and they never see you. All right?_"

Well, he couldn't swear on even a hymnal, much less a Bible, that he agreed with that approach to liquor runs. They were only worth doing if there was an element of danger, which could only happen if he made himself somewhat visible, and, if Harvey or Rosco was having a particularly off night, pretty darn obvious.

"_It ain't,_" sounded like a sigh of pain, heaving its way out of Luke's throat without his cousin's full permission. "_Nothing to go talking about now. Not when—_" cut itself off in a gulp of fresh air. "_You're avoiding the subject anyways, Bo._" Look who was talking. "_I asked what kind of trouble _you've_ been stirring up._"

"What did Daisy tell you?" Best to know which stories had preceded him, and just how bad they made him look.

"_Daisy didn't tell me nothing. But I reckon I could just about hear the gray hairs popping out on Uncle Jesse's head, so best you just tell me now, else I'll ask her for all the details._" Dang it, Bo fancied himself a half-decent poker player, but he'd gone and tipped his whole hand to his cousin, who – though he was on the exact opposite side of the world – had just seen every single one of his cards.

"Just fighting." And racing, and sassing back, and complaining a little. But that last part, well, it wasn't half his fault. While Daisy got to go out and look for the job of her choice (and she seemed loath to pin herself down to any one direction, flirting with the notion of the music business, then being a reporter for the newspaper and most recently becoming a dressmaker) Bo got offered out to any neighbor, friend, acquaintance or stranger who didn't have young and strong labor of their own. Sometimes he earned a dollar or two, but mostly he was an only semi-willing volunteer force of one, mending roofs, shoring up fence lines, and his least favorite, dusting Miss Tisdale's high shelves. Why the woman would store anything more than four feet in the air was beyond his ability to comprehend.

"_Fighting with who? And why?_"

"Ernie Ledbetter. At a graduation party." All right, so it only halfway answered what Luke had asked, but it also provided one detail that his cousin hadn't requested. Seemed a fair exchange to him, and so long as awkward-to-respond-to questions didn't get repeated, he'd be all right.

"_What? You went to a party with Daisy and got into a fight? You're lucky you came back with all your teeth, boy. And I ain't talking about Ernie removing them for you._"

"I know you ain't. She done lit into me pretty good for it."

"_Was you drunk?_"

"Not drunk."

"_But drinking._" Luke knew him too well. Seemed like a man ought to be able to pull the wool over his family's eyes, at least every now and then. "_Just—I ain't gonna tell you I never done none of them things you're talking about, cuz. Just be careful is all._"

"I will," he said, but he wouldn't, not any more than Luke had ever been.

"_What about school?_" All his favorite topics getting raised one right after another. Maybe he wished the boy had gone out and had himself a little fun before calling home after all.

"I passed everything."

"_With a D?_" Oh, what a funny cousin he had. Too bad he was also right. "_You still talking about dropping out?_"

"Not talking about it—"

"_But thinking it._" Deep sigh, and Luke sounded so tired. Like he could sleep this whole week away and it still wouldn't be enough. "_Cousin, you're going to finish school._"

"But—"

"_Don't you go giving me no arguments. You ain't got to like it none, but you got to finish. And I reckon it wouldn't do you no harm to get a couple of Cs._" An order. He ought to holler or complain or just plain tell Luke what he could do with that order. Except it was the most normal thing that had happened to him in months, his big cousin bossing him around. "_Now, about Ernie Ledbetter. I hope you hurt him more than he hurt you._"

* * *

Just about the whole week in Taiwan had been wasted on him. Thoughts of where he was not – in the field with his squadron, home with his kin – haunted him for the first three days. Hazzard plowboy, Corporal and point man for his recon squadron, in the United States or in Vietnam, he knew who he was. In Taiwan he was just a nearly-bald guy in someone else's jeans.

On the fourth day he joined a couple of other Marines on rented motorcycles to go up to the Taroko Gorge. Beautiful country, and he could have appreciated the lush green mountains, the precipitous drops, the exposed marble, the pagodas and brightly painted temples that dotted it all one heck of a lot better if he hadn't been constantly scouting for trip wires and booby-traps, if he hadn't been expecting to see the flash of enemy fire from behind each tree. It seemed, at least, a common malady – after a few hours of trying to enjoy themselves, the whole group of Marines decided to head back to Taipei's bar scene, where Luke didn't get drunk, but he didn't stay sober, and it was then that he finally relaxed. Too bad he had only one day to enjoy after that before it was time to trade in his rented jeans for khakis and get back on the plane.

Back to Cam Ranh Bay, where it was all supposed to come back together, only it fell apart.

"Duke, it's about time you got back." Lieutenant Marcek, acting like it'd been more than five days. Or maybe like he'd missed his star attraction, but Luke didn't want to get stuck in a ring, he wanted to go back to the guys that needed him. Marino walking point for any distance would likely get them all killed. "New orders for you."

Whining would have been totally inappropriate, would have been something only Bo could get away with. And yet that was the feeling inside of him, five years old again, and not wanting to put on nice clothes for company. But dressing up, it turned out, was the name of this particular game: seemed he'd earned himself an extra stripe. He ought to be proud to be a Sergeant already, at least that was what Marcek was telling him, except Luke was nobody's dummy. He knew full well that he'd been promoted based solely his ability to stay alive. And that maybe, if he'd been less concerned about his own survival, if he hadn't wasted Meyers' time with his superficial wound, there'd be no reason to promote him, because Tolliver would still be alive.

"Congratulations," had been Marcek's assessment of the situation. "Now get to work."

Which, it turned out, meant he had to lead a squadron, as if he had the first idea how, based on six months of staying alive and prior to that, nineteen years of plowing fields.

He was lucky enough to inherit part of his old squadron: Meyers and Marino. On top of them he'd get a mixed bag of cherries and guys who'd been here a while, bringing his squadron's total number to six. Ackley, meanwhile, the only person besides Tolliver who might have been able to help him with this overwhelming new assignment, was already gone with his own squadron – which still included Horn – on a mission of his own.

It was insane, it was too much to ask of a guy who'd never, until a year ago, led anything more important than the pack in a dirt road race. It was suicide, it was death reaching right out with intent to take him away from his family, the same as it had stolen his parents, his aunts and his uncles. It was nothing he could expect to live through.

So he took himself a deep breath, lifted his chin, and resolved to handle it.


	18. Part Two, Chapter Seventeen

**Chapter Seventeen**

_August 1972_

A year and a half ago he'd had the luxury of indulging in the notion of half-done. Dreamed-up, to-be-finished-someday, and not-now; that last one was his favorite. Whispering by the brook, using the fish as their excuse, but he just plain liked those quiet moments of daydreaming with Luke – and Daisy, when she would slip away with them. About the things they'd build or do, the people that they'd someday be. Sun beating down against their skin, turning it a deep brown as they laid out everything from the foolish to the fantastic to the reasonably ordinary, then let the notions wash away down the creek with the rest of the runoff. Practical, some of them even made sense, and those were the ones that came closest to getting anywhere, fits and starts interrupted by planting and harvest.

Dogs. That one was fairly simple, breeding themselves a few pups to help with hunts. Back when they first dreamed it up they had a few males to breed with, but Champion was too old now, and Buck would most likely pass on his utter lack of hunting skills to any progeny, so it really came down to Outlaw. With a female, of course, and that was where half-done came in. Followed by undone. Because this dreamed-up project had actually progressed partway, until he'd hacked and chopped the pen that he and Luke (mostly Luke) had built in anticipation of getting a female to do the job. Now he had splinters, most of which had long ago been used as kindling, and the same collection of male dogs that the family had ever had.

Half-done, and it had never much mattered before when they left things that way. Time could be wasted and frittered away when it came to big dreams for the future, but what had burbled up as nothing more than a fun idea two years ago had now blossomed into a necessity.

The corn didn't stand much of a chance against the relentless drought. The well was threatening to run as dry as all the creeks had, and still there was no rain. No corn meant no liquor, because Jesse wouldn't hear of altering the family recipe to include any other grain or fruit. And, no liquor meant no income.

There was eating to consider. Sure there were other worries, like keeping the lights on, and whether they could make it through winter in last year's clothes considering that he had already outgrown most of them, but if they couldn't put food in their mouths, none of the rest of it mattered. Which meant hunting, not merely to supplement the family's diet, but to be the main staple. And with Luke gone, it would come down to just him doing it. It sure would have been useful to have the help of more than one decent hunting dog. But that whole scheme had been hatched, loosely planned out, only half-done. And then destroyed by his own hand.

There were days at a time of routine, getting up when the sun dictated and following the course of his day until exhaustion claimed him. Endlessly boring, but those days were the easy ones to live through, when he could go hours at a time without stumbling over the gaps in his life where Luke should have been. Hunting with him so there'd be no need for more dogs, plotting some insane but ultimately effective solution to the problem of desiccating fields so there'd be no need for hunting, making moonshine runs with him so they'd be halfway fun even without tempting trouble to reach right out and claim him, in short, just Luke being here. He could, in theory, understand the government's desire to borrow his cousin. He just wondered if there was any one of the hundreds of men that must've had a hand in each step of the decision about who to take and when, that could understand just how many ways Luke's absence would affect the people he left behind.

_It ain't like you boy_, his uncle kept saying to him. Wasn't like him to fight (but it was, just not so often or over so little), to sass, to keep to himself. To sulk like this, but it was awfully hard to find the fun side of watching the fields die without the first idea of how to stop it from happening.

* * *

It was a top-heavy pile of peril piled on top of risk, capped with foolishness. He'd known, from their first step into the brush, that there were problems. Take Marino, wide-eyed and quiet instead of his boastful self, and how he keyed off the scared-rabbit attitude of the cherry, Renaud. It was not a good omen. And Benson, a well-experienced man with an oddly flat stare who'd never achieved rank beyond Lance Corporal, and wanted point so badly that it made Luke nervous to give it to him. Jervis and Meyers were the only ones behaving like reasonably mature and well-trained Marines, which left the new Sergeant with more trouble than he needed. But he'd outrun the odds plenty of times before, at tire-screeching velocity on the old Ridge Road with as many as five cars on his tail, and him in the crosshairs. He was a Hazzardite, a Duke boy, a moonshine runner. He could handle whatever life threw at him, even if he had no idea how.

That, looking back, had been what made him keep pushing the squadron forward, even after Marino had tripped in a thick clump of vines and fired his rifle off into the sky, scattering the birds and most likely attracting all the wrong sorts of attention, even after he'd had to remind Renaud more than once to keep his distance from Meyers. Frustrated him to no end how these cherries got sent out with no understanding of what they were getting into and were somehow expected to be of any use to the squadron. Was getting close to blowing his stack at the youngster's foolishness when he was struck by the absurdity of doing such a thing when he'd been a useless cherry himself only seven or so months back. Hanging too close to Ackley at the time, and Tolliver had been direct but patient with him. So he took a deep breath, then re-explained to the kid the wisdom behind keeping his distance from his fellow Marines.

He called a rest early, because Benson was setting a pace that Renaud couldn't match. Didn't matter one small whit that Benson had more months experience in the field than any of them, Luke would not abide poor teamwork. Going solo was no way to run a farm or survive a moonshine run, and it sure as hell wouldn't get them through the dangers of this jungle.

"Meyers, take point," he'd instructed after they'd all eaten whatever the canned mystery meat of the day was, and smoked their ration of cigarettes. For what it was worth, the various biting bugs didn't care for the stench of smoke, and it was enough to make a man consider taking up the nasty habit. "Jervis, back him up." Jervis was nothing more than a cherry himself, but he had a steady temperament, a strong build, and gave every impression of a being a boy that could handle himself. "Benson, you fall in behind me." Grumbles that bordered on insubordination, but the guy was a coward. When none of the other Marines echoed his defiant attitude and Luke leveled a glare at him the likes of which he'd used to keep Bo Duke in line for his whole life, the complaints stopped.

Red ant nest was the next obstacle, stumbled into by Marino who'd hollered holy hell, but there was nothing much to be done for him once the insects had been kicked out of where they'd made their way up his pants leg. A little dancing around, some laughter from the rest of the guys, a few drops of calamine dispensed by Meyers that would accomplish exactly nothing to stop the discomfort and itching, and the day was slipping away from them. This set of ridges, as unfamiliar and thick with undergrowth as they were, would be no place to be humping at night. They needed to move quickly to crest the top and find a reasonably safe perimeter to set up in the valley below. Luke sent his guys back into position, then moved them forward.

All the stumbles of the day so far seemed to evaporate out into the heated air as they finally started making some decent progress. His eyes were on the horizon, not the terrain around them or any of his men, when the explosion happened.

Choking cloud of smoke, guys hitting the dirt, but Luke already knew. It wasn't the sound of them being fired on, and the echo swallowed itself too quickly for it to have been a lobbed grenade. So he didn't bother to duck, just stayed upright as the scene slowed nearly to a stop. A pained scream, birds taking to the skies, Marino bringing his rifle to bear on a nonexistent target, the smoke hanging thick in the clump of trees about a hundred yards to his south. Meyers, up at point, finding his feet and starting to move—

And the spell was over, making time begin to rush past him again.

"No!" he hollered, but it didn't work. Took to his feet then, cutting the trauma specialist off before he could reach the tree line, grabbing a wrist and ducking from the fist that flew at him. Instinct, the guy's body running on adrenalin, and Luke could forgive it, but he couldn't let it go. "Meyers! Hold on!" A struggle between them, but it didn't mean anything. "Ain't gonna do him no good if you go running in after him and get your own self blown up."

The rest of his men were clumped around them, waiting to see who would win this little skirmish, all of them, that was, except Renaud.

"Look," he added, with the same sort of forced calm he would use on his younger cousins when they wanted to run headlong into danger. The smoke was clearing by then, the sun glinting unnaturally through the brush, and there, in plain sight now that it had been stumbled onto, was the trip wire.

"Damn it!" Meyers hollered as a counterpoint to Renaud's silence from where he lay still now, in the churned up dirt about fifty yards away. Luke made a quick decision then, just one more foolish thing for a boy to do when the job called for a man – he took Meyers into his arms. For a few ticks on the clock only, just long enough to try to settle the point man down out of his self-punishing high idle.

"It's okay, didn't none of us see it," he whispered, but he knew that Meyers wouldn't be forgiving himself any time soon. "Jervis," he called, because a calm temperament trumped experience when it came to tracking the origins of trip wires. "Help me here."

Renaud had probably died almost immediately after the explosion; at least that was what Luke told himself and his men. And then there was the painfully thin comfort of knowing that saving him would have prolonged what had to be excruciating pain, because there was more of the man scattered in the woods than there was still attached to his body.

_Don't look_, he wanted to tell his men, heck, if he could close his own eyes to it, he would. But Marines didn't leave anyone behind. He had Marino and Meyers stand a short distance away, calling for a chopper and watching the perimeter while the rest of them wrapped Renaud up in his rain poncho for the trip back to base camp. Jervis' dark skin never did show any signs of flushing but he was suddenly sick in the bushes. When he got control of his stomach again, Luke sent him off to be with the other guys while he and Benson continued to prepare Renaud for his final journey.

"Well, _Sergeant_, ain't you glad you took me off point?" Benson mumbled only halfway under his breath, but Luke ignored him. Because it wasn't the skinny, sandy-haired twenty-three year old that should have been up front, it was Luke.

— — — — — — — — — —

What he wanted, absurdly enough, was to be whipped. To have borne his soul about the way his foolish pride had outweighed his better judgment, to confess that he never should have led those that were younger and less experienced than him into danger, and then to get punished. To let some greater power have at him, shame and embarrass him, flay the skin from his body, cause him greater pain than what he'd inflicted. Because if he bled, if he hurt enough to shed tears of his own, forgiveness would follow. First from the man that had whipped him and then, some hours or days or even weeks later, from himself.

But this wasn't like bringing his sunburned and dehydrated kid cousin home from an overly ambitious hike; this was a boy, someone's son, brother, boyfriend, that he'd brought back in a makeshift body bag.

_I'm sorry_ didn't cover it.

"Sergeant," Marcek kept insisting on calling him, when he'd never been anything more than Duke before. It grated against him to be referred to by the rank he'd been fool enough to accept, prideful enough to think he deserved as a not-quite-twenty-year-old genius who was too big for his breeches. "You need to relax. You and your boys, both. A week here at base, then we'll see if we can't get you a pretty light assignment after that."

That was just plain foolishness. They were here to do a job, and they'd loused it up. There was no point in rewarding them, in making other recon squadrons tackle the dangerous assignments while he and his men took it easy. But Marcek was going on now, talking about how they were supposed to be turning the sort of work that Luke and his squadron did over to the South Vietnam Army anyway, something about the Vietnamization of the war.

"You can't be everything, Duke." Marcek was speaking to him gently now, like Jesse always did after he'd been thoroughly punished. "You can't be Sergeant and point man, both. Maybe you would have seen the trip wire if you'd been up front, but maybe not. The important thing is that you lost only one man." One man, as if that would mean anything to Renaud's mother. _Don't worry, Ma'am, your son was the only one who died up on that hill._ "Not six. You didn't make that rookie mistake of going charging in there after him. You did good, Sergeant."

And try telling Renaud's mother _that_ one.

"Tell you what you need," Marcek announced, his tone every bit as though what they'd been discussing was nothing worse than missing curfew or denting the family pickup. "Is a good fight. You go a few rounds in the ring, you'll feel better. Marine Championships are next month, Duke. What do you say, you want some sparring practice?"

Sure, why not. It had to beat this whole notion of resting, days of mundane military ditch digging followed by nights out at the on-base club, or getting liberty to find an off-base bar where the drinks and women would both be cheap. Sure, he could see the merits in such an indulgence if he were still a Corporal, just one of the guys under Ackley's wing. But Tolliver, who had been noble enough to die instead of getting one of his men killed, wouldn't have squandered his time at base so pointlessly, and Luke wasn't going to either.

So he got in the ring, then got in again and again. Fought Gleason and Steinmetz and Willoughby before he lost track of the names and the faces. Bloodied noses and lips and took lumps of his own, and it helped. It didn't fix anything, but it helped.

* * *

_September 1972_

It was the return of the sun, quite literally, after a deluge. The rains had finally come, soaking the land and all that she had been struggling to grow, saturating the eaves until they sagged and dripped, beating down on his body as he ran from house to barn to see to the livestock. A week of chilly wetness, and then one morning the sky had glowed, the air had sweetened and gusted up in gentle winds again, and the world appeared reborn.

A warmth he could embrace, a sense of a hopeful future that'd been missing for the whole summer. Maybe Bo was just tired of feeling out of sorts, maybe he was ready to smile again. Even school, in its earliest days, couldn't take away his sense of happiness, of fun, of just plain rightness with the world.

Maybe it was being a member of the upcoming graduating class, or that for the first time in his life he was the only Duke in the Hazzard School system, but there was a deep-seated feeling of freedom. No longer burdening himself with heavy notions like drying crops or a cousin on the far side of the world, he flirted with the incoming freshman girls with no more intent than to make them flush a pretty pink, and he signed up for the football team without second thought. There was something on the horizon that was better than the year he'd just left behind, and if he didn't know precisely what that something was, for now it was enough to believe that it was on its way.

Oh, Luke was still missed, no less a part of Bo's thoughts than he'd ever been, but the youngster's heart kept on beating in his chest which meant his cousin was fine, and there was no need for that weighty worrying he'd spent so much time doing. Cloudy thoughts of his Marine cousin blew away on the same breeze as the late summer rains.

His final year of school, and what the heck, he was going to enjoy every second of it. Well, maybe not _every _second, the ones spent in those same hard, wooden chairs (that seemed to get smaller and less comfortable with every passing year) were just as boring as they had ever been. But all those things Luke had been telling him, about the girls, the sports, the camaraderie of other kids who'd suffered through twelve years of school to get here, suddenly made sense. The people, that was what was important, and the school lessons could just take their place in the back seat of Bo's fast-forward life.

Which might have been the excuse he gave himself for not bothering to come back into the building after lunch one day during the second week. Maybe he was distracted by trying to figure out what he could send Luke as a belated birthday present. Or it might just have been the call of the woods, suggesting he go for a hunt even if the corn crop was going to survive. Didn't matter, the fact was that he wandered off the grounds into the trees on the heels of Lawson and Briggs, a couple of guys he'd known his whole life and yet never really known at all. Teammates in sports and familiar faces in math and English, folks he'd seen in church with their hair slicked down by water to make it look less boyish and more angelic, getting nudged by their mothers to be polite and smile at the widow ladies that would pinch their cheeks. A lifetime of being buddies, but now that he was staring straight down the barrel of the end of school, maybe he wanted to get to know them better.

Right off into the woods after them, laughing at the ease of their escape all the way, and Bo reckoned the adventure would be perfected by a trip out to the Okamauga caves where he and Luke had hidden from time to time, but the other guys weren't up for it. Mostly they just wanted to stay on the edge of the tree line and smoke themselves some cigarettes, so Bo kept on wandering more deeply into the woods without them. Chattering squirrels scolded him from the branches overhead, and mourning doves grieved for the education he wasn't getting, but it was a beautiful day and he'd be a fool to waste it behind a desk.

For all the reprimanding he was getting from the wildlife, none of it saw fit to remind him what time it was or that there were chores to be done back home, and by the time he got around remembering those things on his own, the sun had arced most of the way across the sky. School had let out and he still had to go back to the parking lot for Luke's car. Felt the fool, tiptoeing across a cleared field to the near-empty lot, his blonde hair a beacon to anyone who wanted to look in his general direction, but he made it to the Falcon, slid inside, and started it up. Finally got around to looking through the windshield just in time to catch sight of Principal Parnell making his way across the asphalt to his own plain white, older model Volkswagen. The man raised his hand in greeting, so Bo did the same before driving off with a giddy laugh of stupid relief and a quiet resolve not to be quite so foolish tomorrow.

Not that the next day provided him with the chance, or rather, his opportunities for idiocy came in unexpected packages, and too quickly for him to plan a clever escape. Happened before the clock had ticked around to nine, and if his brain was supposed to be awake by then, English class had put it back to sleep. Enough so that when the summons came for him to visit the principal's office, the sense of well-being that had hung in the air around him for the past couple of weeks didn't even have the smarts to fade away. Not, that was, until he had arrived in front of Miss Hawley and he caught a quick glance of a flash of red as the door to the inner office opened and closed. Suddenly his stomach pitched downward and his mouth lost all moisture; he even forgot to flirt with Miss Hawley when she told him precisely where to sit and wait to be called into the inner sanctum. Not that she was especially cheery either – her eyes were torn between scolding and pity. If he hadn't already known the answer, he'd ask her exactly how much trouble he was in.

Besides, he barely had time to sit down before that inner door opened again, revealing a finger crooking in his general direction to call him in. Made him wish for Luke, who could think his way through an escape from this, or maybe Sweet Tilly, because no one would ever catch him if he was behind her wheel, but in the absence of either, he had no choice but to go where he was wanted.

"Bo," Mr. Parnell greeted. "Have a seat."

_I'd just as soon not, especially in light of the fact that the only available chair is within swatting distance of my Uncle Jesse's hand._ But he was smart enough not to do anything more than quietly sit down. And feel the heat of anger emanating from the man to his right, red-faced and just about to boil over.

"Would you like to explain how it is that you missed your afternoon classes yesterday?"

No, sir, he would not. But those meaty hands were folded neatly on his desk, and the principal was waiting with all of his attention for a brilliant explanation. And Jesse, right there next to him, red cap caught in his tightly clutched fingers, wouldn't even begin to look at him. Torn once again between honesty and never admitting to guilt without the presence of a lawyer (or a counselor, and he sure as heck would appreciate Luke's advice right about now) left his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth from the lack of moisture there.

"Uh," he said, because the room was frozen around him, stopped still like stalking a deer on a hunt, but this time it was him in the crosshairs. "I lost track of time." He figured that walked the fine line between truth and confession.

"You lost track of time." That was Jesse, talking to him but still not looking anywhere near him, and old Luke would probably just present his backside for the whipping right about now. But Bo was rather partial to sitting and wasn't quite ready to give it up for the next week. "You didn't notice that everyone else was going back to class? You didn't see the halls emptying out?"

"No, sir." _Not with how I wasn't in the building and all._

"Do you need glasses, boy?" Now that would be a punishment worse than whipping. Big old horn-rimmed spectacles and the girls would be about as attracted to him as they were to old Benny Marsh whose lenses were so thick that they made him look like a pop-eyed mule.

"No, sir." Might as well come clean, or the old man would keep poking holes in his thin story like a buzzard picking over a flattened carcass on the side of the road. "I don't need glasses. I just didn't much feel like going to class, I guess."

"You didn't much feel like," started the totally disbelieving tirade that was likely to end with _now you just march yourself into that barn_, except it would be an awfully long hike to get there from where he was sitting right now. "Going to—"

Besides, before the old man could quite get that far, Mr. Parnell had an interjection or two.

"Well, it is Bo's first offense." Which, as far as he was concerned, seemed a perfectly logical direction in which to take this discussion.

Until, that was, Jesse had to go knowing him too well. "It wasn't his first offense, it was just the first time you caught him. Wasn't it, boy." Not a question, not even a hint of upward inflection in his voice, and yet it demanded an answer all the same.

There were technicalities that he could have considered. Like whether offenses really counted if he hadn't been caught, and what did the word offense really entail? Did slates get wiped clean with each new school year or did he have to confess to transgressions from last spring as well as the present?

But, "Yes, sir," was probably the wisest course of action.

"All the same," and there went Mr. Parnell, sassing Uncle Jesse. At least that would be what it got called if Bo had dared do it. And since the principal's hide couldn't be tanned, Bo had himself a powerful feeling that his own backside had just earned a few extra licks. "I'm inclined to show him some leniency. I'm not sure I'd be able to concentrate in class either, if it was my cousin over there in Vietnam, getting injured twice." Yep, those calls for prayers in church hadn't gone unnoticed by the rest of the congregation. "Normally we'd suspend him, but considering the circumstances—" Oh, that was going to ensure that the upcoming whipping was especially painful. "I think we could give him a warning and a couple of days of detention."

"Ain't no reason to go easy on the boy. He knows full well that what he done was wrong, no matter where his cousin is. Don't you, Bo?"

"Yes, sir." And that settled that. He'd cut out of school half a day early, and his punishment for that crime was a day off from school. It would be absurd, if it wasn't for Jesse and the work that Bo and his sore backside were about to get assigned.

The trip home in the tight confines of the pickup – because punishment included an immediate ban on him driving, even if the old man and Daisy would have to come back later to rescue Luke's Falcon – ought to have been silent. Jesse's demeanor demanded it, and if Luke had been here, the tacit command probably would have been obeyed. But then there would have been two of them in trouble, and he would have had the companionship of his cousin's warm shoulder against his. All he had now was the weight of waiting, the misery of being lonely when the next body was only inches away from him.

"Uncle Jesse," he tried, and even if they should have been focused on the red clay of the road in front of them, those deep blue eyes swung around to capture his, to freeze whatever explanation he'd intended to make in his throat.

He didn't get more than a few words from the man, nothing more than grunts and general gestures, before he found himself in the barn. A favorite punishment for his boys, making them scrub every inch of the place to the point where it would be clean enough to eat off the floor. And Maudine, who must have been in cahoots with the old man, had left him the kind of mess that would make his task nearly impossible.

The truck revved up again, left the property then returned with the rumble of Luke's car following it. Minutes passed and he waited so hard for the shouted lecture that he just about gave it to himself. About how he had no right to go turning his back on someone – anyone – who wanted to teach him something, and certainly shouldn't have gone letting his cousin's current situation play on his principal's sympathies, and why wasn't he more like Daisy who never would have—

And he must have thought his sweet cousin into being, the way the light canted into the corner where he was working when the girl swung the door of the barn open. He let his face relax into a smile – of relief that it was her and not Jesse or maybe just because he was tired of frowning – the kind he'd forgotten to give Miss Hawley. "How bad is it?"

"Bo Duke," she snapped, and he had his answer right there. It wasn't good, and Daisy wasn't going to take his side of it. "What is wrong with you?"

Dangerous question, just the sort that made him want to defend himself or explain and remind her that the halo over her own head was a bit off kilter from her own mistakes or misdeeds. But none of those answers, just tickling at his tongue, would be wise to utter out loud right now. Not that she gave him the time to, anyway.

"Our Uncle Jesse don't need to be worrying about you, not when he's already so worried about Luke." Which wasn't fair, skipping a couple of classes wasn't anything close to dangerous, wasn't worry-inducing, and besides, Jesse didn't have the market cornered when it came to stewing over Luke, anyway. "There ain't no reason you couldn't behave yourself, Bo Duke." Wow, she really was mad. That was twice in a few seconds time that he'd had both his first and last names hissed at him. At least she hadn't resorted to _Beauregard_. Yet.

"Bo!" But that was worse. That was Uncle Jesse, finally summoning him to the kitchen. Silly to get called inside when the two of them would be right back out here, whip in tow, in a few minutes.

"Oh, Bo," Daisy said, and it was mournful. "Good luck." Yeah, even enemies turned sympathetic when you were about to die.

But after he'd been reminded to leave his boots on the porch then sent to wash his hands before sitting at the old wooden table to face one glowering uncle, there was no mention of tanning anyone's hide. "What was you thinking, boy?" was the gist of what got said. "I'm ashamed of you."

The whip against his skin couldn't have cut him to the quick any more successfully than that.


	19. Part Two, Chapter Eighteen

_**Author's Note: **I suppose I really ought to pay my dues to canon. Characters (aside from Dukes, Davenports, Hoggs, Strates and Coltranes) that I borrowed are as follows:_

_Ernie Ledbetter comes from _Luke's Love Story  
_Candy Dix is on loan from _Play it Again, Luke  
_Phil Ackley comes from _The Great Hazzard Hijack  
_Lee Benson was borrowed from _Sittin' Dukes  
_Sinclair was named by me, but his qualities are borrowed from _In This Corner, Luke Duke _(you'll see that part as it comes by)_

_These are all characters that I do not own, do not earn from, do not wish any harm to the real creators of. I tried to be gentle in my borrowing, and promise to return them in pretty close to the same condition in which I found them._

_So close to done with this one that I can just about taste it. (I predict it will be yummy for me to to taste.) Just rewriting the epilogue, and when that is done I promise to come out to play more. It's almost been a punitive measure - finish your own homework before you go reading fun stuff!_

_Thanks for sticking with me through yet one more._

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**Chapter Eighteen**

_October 1972_

He did not get to choose his orders. If he did, he most likely would have sent the whole squadron back into the heart of the jungle in an attempt to get right back onto the horse that they'd all fallen off of. But once they got up to Hill 1081, he forgot his complaints about soft duty. Or most of them, anyway.

As a bonus, the whole of Echo Company, save a few guys that were on R&R or recuperating in a hospital somewhere, was up there. His first hours on the relatively level ground at top of the mountain (because hill was a misnomer when it came to the height of where they were currently stationed) were spent looking for Ackley, but when he found Horn he got reminded that those hashmarks on the older Marine's helmet had only gone through September anyway; Phil had gotten his orders to go home.

His disappointment about that couldn't last, not up here where the air was as fresh and cool as an Appalachian morning, where the trees that ringed the stony clearing grew unmolested by napalm and the slashing ways of warriors. Way up in the forest mist, with an overlook into Vietnam to the east and Cambodia to the west, and it was purportedly safe up here. The steep sides of this flat-topped mountain repelled sneak-attacking enemies, and the easy-to-access landing zone meant that deliveries of ammo and food were frequent. And what they got to eat up here was miles better than C-Rations.

Then there was the music, the sort of thing that recon boys never got to indulge in. Armed Forces Vietnam Radio came in strong up there, got played over the loudspeaker system most of the day. If what got played on the station tended more toward rock than his normally preferred county and western, he reckoned he could live with that. Because music had been a part of his life from those first nights of his mother singing him to sleep right on up through those days spent with Candy Dix, and ever since his arrival in Vietnam he'd been pretty well deprived of anything more melodic than occasional birdsong.

But he and his men were trained for action, for feats of strength and bravery. Sitting at the crown of the world and listening to the radio while firefights took place below them, sometimes in spectacularly bright colors, wasn't easy on any of them.

"Duke." Marino had found him perched on a rock, surveying the treetops in the valley below. "Benson's starting again."

Nothing to do but sigh about that one, then come down from his quiet reverie. Lance Corporal Lee Benson, eternal schoolyard bully arrested at about ten years old, knew how to get under the skin of a couple of the other guys, including Marino's.

"What's he doing?" But it didn't matter. The real problem was that they'd been still for too long, and that without the threat of danger lurking behind every stone or tree, his high-strung men had started to take it out on each other.

"Trying to talk Fevrier into a game of Russian roulette."

Damn it all, he _would_ end up responsible for an idiot Marine that was caught somewhere between homicide and suicide. But there were always new latrines just waiting for the digging at the south end of the hill, and Luke sentenced his entire squadron, whether they'd been concocting trouble or not, to shovel duty. And, for good measure, made them leave their weapons off to the side.

"The more you work together," he suggested, "instead of flapping your fool jaws, the faster you'll be done." So he could give them something else to tire them out. He hadn't spent a lifetime as Jesse Duke's unruly nephew without learning a thing or two about dealing with overgrown boys that had more energy than brains.

While they worked he slipped away into the radio shack, so he could contact Lieutenant Marcek and request a new mission for guys who couldn't appreciate the gift of relaxation when it was handed to them on a silver platter. About the only member of his squadron smart enough to enjoy a good rest might have been Jervis, but somehow or other he'd become Benson's only buddy, joining in the jerk's games half the time.

Frustratingly, his superior wasn't keen on helping him out.

"You're getting picked up in six days to come back here anyway," he got reminded, "for that championship match. Can't have you off in the jungle where we can't find you." Or where he might get hurt, and the way the Corps placed a higher value on some men than others rankled hard against his sense of justice and fair play. It was just too bad that Marines like Tolliver and Renaud hadn't been useful tools in a totally pointless sort of a fight – the kind that took place in a ring and gave officers like Marcek something to brag about and, most likely, wager on – or they might still be alive.

But Luke was nothing if not resourceful – a lifetime in a moonshining family had given him that – so he invented a mission of his own. They, every last one of them, stank of sweat and rot, of the bugs they'd been sleeping with and of the animals that they had become. So, after he'd worked them to exhaustion then let them get a reasonable night's sleep, Luke led his squadron down the steep hillside, sliding on boot heels and backsides for some of it. Red dirt here the same color as home but somehow it clung more tightly to the skin, got breathed more deeply into the lungs. All the same, the scenery in this part of the country was pretty, and if the rest of his mostly city-raised boys couldn't appreciate that fact, well that was just too dang bad. They also couldn't halfway figure out what to look for out here by way of clues about how the landscape all fit together, where to find shelter in a wind or edible plants if they were starved, but Luke reckoned he could help them with that.

"Marino, take point." It was, he figured, safe enough to let old stumble-foot replace him at the lead.

"But I ain't sure where we're going." Of course he wasn't, and what was more, even if he had been, he would have been asking to use a compass. But this sort of a trip didn't call for one.

"You're headed to that ravine over there," Luke informed him, pointing. "And then you're going to walk south along the rim of it."

"South," Marino repeated back, all of his concentration going to the effort to figure out which direction that might be. There was a reason Luke liked this guy, and half of it might just have been how much he resembled Bo. Never wanting to go to school, halfway ignoring the lessons taught there, but also never willing to admit he didn't know or couldn't do a thing.

"Where's the sun?" It was an exercise they'd been through before.

"Right," Marino answered, and Luke reckoned he'd be lucky if the boy didn't lead them east.

Eventually, though, the column of them walked their way to where the ravine they'd been following and the ridge they'd been walking along met in a clearing, and there was the exact thing Luke had been seeking: a clear pond, fed by a mountain stream.

"All right," he instructed the five guys in his command, "swim."

"What?" Benson. Always questioning every order, every decision, as if Luke was the crazy one that would challenge the cherry in the squadron to a game of Russian roulette with a revolver.

"Swim," he repeated, even though Meyers hadn't waited to be told twice, had dived into the clear water, uniform and all. "And I don't want you out of there until the whole bunch of you stinks a whole lot less."

"What's the point, if we're all just going to get sweaty climbing back up the hill?"

"Well then," Luke informed Benson with a tight smile that strongly suggested he shut up and take the order that had been given him. "We'll have to find ourselves another swimming hole tomorrow." And maybe he'd let his guys try to figure out how to go about locating one. He kicked off his boots, because they really didn't need a bath even if the rest of him did, and slid into the water to join the rest of his squadron. "You don't want to swim, you can take watch."

"I'm coming," got grumbled at him, so Luke ducked under the water, scrubbed at his itchy head where his hair was already getting kind of long again, then climbed back out to take watch himself. It wasn't like he really minded sitting quietly and letting the sun dry him off. It was comfortable, it was relaxing, and the only thing that made him nervous was watching Benson use his Ka-Bar to give himself a makeshift haircut. Even if he was loosely following orders by grooming himself, something about the way that boy handled a knife left a very unpleasant feeling in the pit of Luke's stomach.

— — — — — — — — — — —

Lights and pain, and he couldn't think. Hard, solid surface underneath him, and if it wasn't a bed, he didn't much care. Months of sleeping in bunkers and a good nap right here was sorely tempting.

"Duke!"

But he couldn't; that kind of rest was forbidden to a man with the sort of responsibilities that he had.

"Three, four," and, when he opened his eyes from where they'd been squeezed shut, fat fingers in his face. Beyond that the glare of the sun through the palm trees that surrounded this little oasis in the middle of war.

"Get your lazy ass up, Sergeant!" Marcek. Acting like some sort of coach or fight manager, but he didn't have half the skills that Lieutenant Landis, back on Parris Island, had. Couldn't goad or shame with any real cleverness, couldn't make the type of simple sense that would clear Luke's head after a hit like that.

So it was up to him to pull himself back to his feet, to wave off the referee with a slurred insistence that he was fine, to lift up his chin so he could see through the slit that his left eye had become, then protect himself with a raised right glove.

He was, quite simply, taking a hell of a beating.

Sinclair, that was what he'd been told his opponent's name was, though Luke wouldn't have been surprised to learn that his real name was Mack Truck. Hitting him was about as comfortable as punching a steel grille, but broken hands were better than broken faces (or damaged brains) any day, so he swore to himself, just before the ref gave in and let them go at each other again, that he wouldn't let that left hook catch him off-guard again.

And forgot about the right until it smashed into his chin. Damn, that Sinclair had some quick hands.

"Come on, Duke!" come from Marino, his cheerleading squad of one, and that had been his one stipulation coming into this fight – that his men got to see it from up front. At the time he'd been thinking it would be a chance for them to relax and enjoy a good show, but now that the main attraction was their badly beaten Sergeant, he had come to wonder at the wisdom of his decision. When he could manage to think anything at all around the pounding in his head. "You got him right where you want him, now!" Right where he wanted him, indeed. Standing there in front of Luke, a dash of blood contrasting with the dark skin above his eyebrow but otherwise perfectly intact, and somehow managing a smirk around his mouthpiece. Heck, if Luke had his druthers, Sinclair would be face down on the mat right about now.

He took another useless swipe at the guy, whose feet were just about as fast as his hands.

Either his head was ringing, or that was the bell signaling that he'd survived the round. Hard to be sure, except that Sinclair retreated to his own corner, where his trainer used a damp sponge to cool him off against the tropical heat. Looked so refreshing that Luke finally got around to stumbling over to his own stool.

"Here," offered Abbott, the skinny Corporal who'd been assigned to look after him in the ring. He spat out his mouth guard to take what was offered him: a canteen of sugary water meant to quench his thirst and give him energy at the same time. So far this magic elixir hadn't done a whole lot of good. "Let me see your eye." Yeah, good luck with that. It was swollen so close to shut that he didn't figure anyone would be seeing anything but bruise there for a few days. But he tipped his head back and let the guy take a look. He was, after all, a medic of some sort or other from the infirmary here. Maybe he could figure out how to pry it open again.

"Come on, Duke, you're embarrassing me out here," Marcek growled from the other side of the ropes, but it was hard to care about the Lieutenant's pride when his own was taking such a beating.

"Take another drink," Abbott interceded, putting his body between Luke and Marcek. Now if only he could talk the Corporal into running that kind of interference between him and Sinclair.

Damn bell rang again before he was ready (but then, he reckoned there was no way he'd have any chance of being ready before somewhere around the twelfth of never) and he jammed his mouthpiece back into place. Found his feet and made a good show of dancing around on them because they, at least, didn't hurt. Nodded his head at the ref to show he was ready, and braced himself for the beating of a lifetime.

"Never should have wasted my money on that sort of inbred Georgia dirt."

They might have been Marcek's words; afterward he'd never been able to say for sure. His vision, what of it he had left, took on a red tinge right around then, and his ears didn't so much ring as pound with the sound of his heart. All the moisture that Abbott had just poured into him retreated from his mouth, and his nostrils flared as he tried to take in a deep breath, snuffling down the smell of sweat, liniment and his own blood. Sinclair came bouncing at him as if it was perfectly safe to do so, as if Luke hadn't just turned into precisely the ball of rage that his Uncle Jesse had always detested. One of those quick hands took a good swipe at him, too, connected with his cheek, because Luke hadn't bothered to put his hands up in defense. Made him stumble backward a step, but the second he got his feet back underneath himself, he came barreling at the man like a boulder in a landslide. Let his right fist fly just as hard as it wanted to, felt the pain ricochet up his arm from the connection. Watched Sinclair go down like a dead weight, saw how he didn't move or even flinch as the ref counted his ten, felt his own arm get lifted up in the air by the ref on one side and Abbott on the other. Then Marcek was all over him, grabbing the forearm that the ref had just let go of and forcibly pumping his fist into the air, calling on some of the burlier men from his entourage to come and help him lift Luke into the air.

But he'd be damned if he was going to celebrate a single thing, not until Sinclair shook, shuddered, shivered, or otherwise proved that he was alive. If he'd been wearing anything but boxing gloves he would have pointed; instead he found himself spitting out his mouth guard without concern for where it fell and hollering for someone, anyone, to pay attention to the man that was lying as still as a stone on the mat in front of them.

The sounds around him changed then, shouts and bellowed orders where all had been cheering a few seconds back. Movement to his left, Abbott kneeling to tend to the injured man while Luke got held back, pulled away from the mess he'd made.

"Help him, damn it," he hollered, but it was wasted breath by now; there were three men hovering over the guy, trying to do just that.

"Come on, Duke, let's get you out of here," Marcek was saying, and he didn't want to, had no interest in leaving this place until he saw some sign that Sinclair was alive.

But he got led away anyway, into the quiet cool of the supply offices where Marcek worked. Got his cuts and bruises tended to by a nurse, got handed a shot glass full of something that burned his throat like bad moonshine. Sat there, numb to his own pain, dumb and dull witted while his mind churned over what he'd just done.

It wasn't anything like firing into the elephant grass on a dark night, never sure whether his bullets struck anything more sentient than a tree. Wasn't like making the mistake of letting Renaud walk straight into a trip wire, either. What he'd done was everything his uncle had tried – with words and with a whip – to warn him would happen. He'd let his temper get the better of him and he'd killed a man.

Sat there doing not much of anything, ignoring questions, refusing to drink any more rotgut whiskey, silently berating himself and wondering whether he'd even bother to try to defend himself when the military court charged him with murder. Somewhere after what might have been minutes or hours, Abbott pushed his way into the small space.

"He's alive," was all Luke heard before the uneven gray concrete of the floor came up to meet him in a rush.

* * *

School was supposed to make him smarter. His whole life and not a single person had ever told him anything different, and he'd be willing to bet all the money that he had, a whopping four bucks that he was supposed to use to fill the Falcon's tank this afternoon, that every teacher in the Hazzard School System would swear it was true.

But he couldn't spot the smallest bit of evidence that supported the notion. Oh, if he had to be completely honest he might have to admit that those first five years or so had been useful. Reading, writing, simple figuring; those were skills he used from time to time. Everything since those days had only served to make a mess of what he'd already learned.

Take cursive writing. All it did was to take words that could have been printed clear and simple, and turn them into a squiggled mess that no one could read. And then there was logic, which he'd studied in last year's math class. Two months of if-p-then-q, and it was all a bunch of gibberish. He'd never once grown a single p on the farm, and if he had, he was pretty sure that no matter how it got distilled, it would never turn into a q.

It was a shame, when it came right down to it. If he'd actually been able to learn a single useful thing from those logic lessons, it might come in handy now. Luke's thoughts always seemed to follow a straight line ending in some sort of a predictable outcome. Bo's did laps around his head, dizzying circles that began and ended in the same place. Then again, it wasn't entirely his fault, considering how farming was cyclical, as was moonshining, and heck, life. After all, it was fall, and just like every other fall since the early nineteen-sixties, that meant he was in school.

Most of the time, anyway, and he wasn't supposed to miss a day. An inviolable rule, at least that was what Jesse's punishment had been meant to teach him. Mandated not to leave the confines of the farm, except to go to school. And also church. Except, of course, he also had to make moonshine deliveries. Then there was the day that the new water heater had arrived and Jesse had needed him to go into town and load it into the pickup. All in all he couldn't swear that the restrictions of his punishment had actually kept him limited to Duke soil for more than one or two of the fourteen days that it was meant to last. About all it did was make him miss tryouts for football, the sport that was supposed to keep him wanting to bother with school in the first place.

"Duke," Coach Hall had scolded when the reason for his absence had been explained. "You're lucky you're such a good player. You get a free pass out of tryouts. But you'd best be off of punishment by the first game of the season. Stay out of trouble." Which, with Jesse's attempted strangle-hold on his life, he'd manage well enough. "Hard-headed Duke boys," the coach had mumbled under his breath in closing. Those words, though Bo was pretty sure the coach hadn't intended them to, made him smile. It had been too long since someone had thought of him and Luke as being the same.

So he'd made the team and played for two Saturdays in a row, but he had himself a pretty good idea he'd be benched this coming Saturday. That was, if he got to go to the game at all.

Because school, which was supposed to make him smarter, was the most important thing – except when it wasn't, when he had to get pulled out of class to help with the harvest, which was the other most important thing. Couldn't be put off until Thanksgiving week this year, either, not after as dry a summer as they'd experienced. So here he was in the heat of October, pulling corn off the stalk instead of sitting behind a desk and getting smarter. And missing school meant missing practice meant angering Coach Hall, and none of it, not a single part of his life, was as simple as if p then q.

He didn't want to go to school. He did want to play football, but in truth, there were only a limited number of games in his future anyway. He did love the farm, he'd love moonshine deliveries more if they weren't so dang lonely. He didn't want to worry, from year to year, whether the crops would fail. He did miss Luke. And finally, he reckoned that dropping out of school, joining the Marines and earning a paycheck might be the best solution to all of the Duke family's problems. Sure, Jesse would bluster up a storm (but not whip him, apparently he'd gotten too old for that), and Luke would pretend to be mad that Bo had disobeyed his orders about staying in school. Daisy would cry a little, but then she'd go back to her on-again-off-again job of helping Miss Tisdale sort mail in the Post Office, and, with only Jesse to feed and clean up after, maybe she'd even get around to dating Enos Strate.

All right, so there would be no way Jesse could run a farm without him, but with money coming in from both his nephews' military earnings (plus whatever little bit Daisy could contribute) he wouldn't have to, either. It wasn't as simple as p leading to q, but it made a certain amount of logical sense.

He'd be eighteen in November, and football season would end soon after that. Following that, he reckoned, there'd be no reason he shouldn't go off to the Marine recruiter in Capitol City. And leave p and q behind to look after themselves.

* * *

There was a lot of blood on his hands. Sinclair would survive, in fact, he'd already been alert, upright, ready to shake hands and prove there were no hard feelings even before Luke's face had properly healed from the beating he'd taken. But Sinclair wobbled on his feet, and it seemed pretty likely that, for two different reasons, neither of the former boxers would ever be able to take to the ring again.

Jervis' blood, well that was a different story. Too many lazy days in Cam Ranh with nothing better for his men to do than move dirt from here to there, pick on the remarkably few newly-arriving cherries, then pick on each other over beers in the dingy club, and nowhere in their training had there been a course on sitting still. Recon squadrons just didn't know how.

Cam Ranh was its own little hell. Oh, the guys who had drawn permanent duty here wouldn't say that, they'd call it paradise to the jungle's purgatory. But to guys who'd been out there, living only by the rules that they made up each morning and changed come afternoon, base was like being in boot camp all over again. All about rank and routine and there was no rightful place for a Sergeant here. Enlisted men had their club and commissioned officers kept to themselves, and Sergeants were somewhere in between the two. So Luke left both officers and enlisted guys to their privacy. Too much space, too generous with the liberty, and by the time he figured it out, there was blood on the barracks floor.

Benson stared after him with those piercing eyes, no matter where he went. Finally made him believe what his kin had told him all his life about the power behind his own eyes, roughly the same shade of blue, when they got wielded in an angry glare. But he didn't worry much about it, just put his whole squadron to work on some purposeless but tiring activity, and let them be grateful to have the evenings to themselves.

It was dark, the whole mess of them should have been out somewhere, hell, if he were an enlisted man, if his head didn't still get to pounding every night from the beating he'd recently taken, Luke would have been drinking side-by-side with them, on-base or off. Instead he was strolling across the compound, breathing fresh air and considering how to convince Marcek that he was healthy enough to head back into the field, when he saw a nervous light bouncing around the enlisted men's barracks. Made his stomach clench tight even if his brain kept trying to remind him that there was no enemy here at Cam Ranh. Wasn't anything he could shake off, so he slid into the south end door, all quiet-like, and made his near-silent way to the second floor. Slipping through the shadows, but before he could get close, he heard the scream. Running then, no concern about sneaking, because that kind of sound could only be made by a man in great pain.

Blood. On the floor, on Jervis's uniform, on the blankets of the rack he'd fallen next to, on Benson's Ka-Bar knife, jagged blade still waving in the air, threatening Luke.

There were rules of good sportsmanship that went along with fist fights and boxing matches. Like, let the other guy swing first so you know he's serious, and pull your punches until you figure out just how hard a hit he can sustain. Luke forgot every single one of those laws of fair play in the instant he saw the wild look in Benson's eyes. He forgot that he was a boxer with an unfair advantage, forgot he'd nearly killed a man within the week, and went right after that blade. Both of his hands on Benson's wrist, all of his weight propelling the man backward until his spine slammed into the unfinished wood of the barracks wall.

Voices around them, must have been enough noise to draw a small crowd, but all Luke could focus on was that knife, which Benson was clinging to with all the strength of his hand, dripping blood. Crazy, the damned world was insane when the same six men who had watched over and protected each other through the most remote and uncharted parts of this country could turn on each other here in a place where they ought to have been perfectly safe.

Benson fought neither fair nor clean, head-butting and even biting into his forearm before Luke finally slammed his back against the wall enough times that the knife hit the floor in a clatter. From there it was just a matter of subduing the man, and if Luke came pretty darn close to popping the Lance Corporal's arm right out of its socket in the process, well, he didn't feel too guilty about that.

And just to prove that there was no sanity in any of what they were doing here, Benson got sent to the brig, charged with stealing from another man's foot locker, then trying to kill him, and Jervis wound up getting flown to Tokyo where there was a much better chance of repairing the damage that had been done him. Meanwhile, Luke got assigned two more Cherries – who had names, and if Luke had to learn what they were, their ages and where they were from, he didn't want to, didn't have any desire to get to know even one more person who might die or crack under the pressure of being here – and only then was his squadron sent out on a mission. Somewhere west of Dak Seang, an area that none of them had ever seen before. Dug into bunkers and silently watching enemy activity not a football field away, and it dawned on Luke that he'd better start praying right then and there that they didn't get spotted. Because there was no way he could deliberately bring his weapon to bear on another man, no way he could pull the trigger. He'd nearly killed a man in a boxing ring, he'd had a front-row seat to a near killing in the barracks, and neither instance had made a lick of sense to him.

But this, the efforts of men in preparing to launch what might be an assault or could just be an attempt to defend themselves, wasn't anything worth killing over either. Besides, he'd never be able to swear whether any violence he engaged in here would be an attempt to protect the guys here now, or revenge for the ones that had already been lost. And he wasn't sure it would matter either way. Dead was dead, and he was halfway to crazy.


	20. Part Two, Chapter Nineteen

**Chapter Nineteen**

_November 1972_

He was crazy. That was Daisy's assessment of him, and she was sticking to it.

"We ain't on a run. You got no call to be driving this way," when he couldn't swear he was driving any kind of a way at all, other than fast. If that meant he got air from time to time, that wasn't really his fault. The roads in this county weren't exactly smooth, and if the taxes that they paid to ensure that they should have been got diverted before it ever went to filling in potholes, well Bo was as helpless as the rest of the county to prevent that from happening. "Bo!" But apparently Daisy didn't see it that way.

"Fine," wasn't agreement, but she could take it that way if she wanted, and he wouldn't bother to correct her. His right foot backed off the pedal a bit – not much, but enough to mean she didn't have to go clinging to the dull blue window frame and looking around like she was wondering whether she ought to go digging whatever might have been left of the seatbelt out of where it'd been jammed into the seat cushions since before Luke even bought this car. "I guess we ain't exactly in a hurry, anyways."

It was just town they were going to, the same town as it had ever been with its picket-fenced yards lining the one-way streets that led to the square where the same businesses had occupied the same lots since he had been a little blonde brat that used to get carried in Aunt Lavinia's arms. And when they got to town, they'd only be doing the same sort of errands that they ever had, picking up some oats for the livestock and some motor oil for the tractor.

Daisy's hand came up to tangle in his hair then, unexpected affection that he didn't really deserve, but he accepted it when it came, let her rest her head on his shoulder and turned his head away from his driving long enough to kiss her forehead.

"You keep growing," the girl flattered with an echo of a kiss to his cheek, "and I ain't gonna be able to do that no more."

"I ain't growing, you're shrinking," he answered back. Tolerated the swat to his head when it came because his smart mouth had earned it.

"Bo," she said, hugging herself onto his right arm, and it was right about then that he figured out that she was up to something. "I want you to promise me you'll be more careful." Up to something that bore all the earmarks of a lecture, and as far as he could figure, he hadn't earned one. Heck, he'd slowed down when she'd told him to.

"I go any slower and we ain't never gonna get there," got him smacked again, and he reckoned that the ban that Jesse long ago put on boys hitting girls ought to have gone both ways. He was liable to wind up black and blue just from repetitive swatting.

"I ain't talking about right now, and you know it." Girl gave him credit for greater knowledge than he actually had, apparently. "I mean when you do your moonshine runs. Enos done told me that ain't nobody out there that's half the trouble you are." Well. A man could have been proud to hear such a thing, if his cousin would let him. "He says Sheriff Coltrane done told every one of his deputies to pull out all the stops to try to catch you, and not to show you no mercy."

He couldn't, he felt, be blamed for laughing at that. Daisy seemed to disagree.

"Bo! I ain't kidding, and neither is he. Enos says it's for your own good. He says they expect you're going to get hurt. He says you're reckless."

What he did on moonshine runs might be reckless – if it were someone else behind the wheel. There wasn't any driver out there that was his equal, and that included his own kin. Rosco Coltrane couldn't be blamed for anticipating the worst, not when the sheriff's cruiser got wrapped around solid surfaces on a near-weekly basis. The fool lawman just didn't understand that Bo Duke had never in his life had an accident in a car, and he sure didn't expect to start now.

"I'll be okay," he assured her.

"Even for a moonshine driver, he says, you're dangerous. Bo," sounded like begging, but she was just being silly. "Enos ain't gone and told Jesse what the Sheriff said yet, but if you don't settle down, he's gonna." The old man always claimed to know everything they'd ever done, even before they got around to doing it. All the same, Bo wasn't in a real hurry to be tattled on. "And if he don't I will."

"Oh, fine," he groused, because it was all he could do. She could smack him ten more times, and his best retaliation would be a little light sarcasm.

"Bo," she said, snuggling up to his arm again, like she hadn't just threatened to go spouting off to their uncle. "I could come back out on runs to help you out. Only reason I don't is you said you don't need it."

"I don't." Last thing that he wanted when he was out there playing wild games of catch-me-if-you-can with whatever sort of law he could scare up, was someone else to worry about.

"I don't understand," she complained, pulling away from him, but she was a Duke, had plenty of the same blood flowing through her veins as he had in his. She knew the itching need for excitement, for a challenge that would take all of her skills and country smarts to meet. "Why you got to go worrying Uncle Jesse like this."

"I ain't the one planning on telling him nothing at all about liquor runs," he reminded her. Only thing their uncle ever needed to know, when it came right down to it, was that the delivery got made.

"Bo! It ain't just the runs, its skipping school, and it's hanging out with Cooter when you know Uncle Jesse's worried that he ain't exactly settled down from being wild. It's the way you go out of your way to find trouble, and then give him lip about it. Why, it ain't even like you."

He'd heard that a lot over the past year. Everything he did, apparently, wasn't like him. Which was a strange thing to say if you took a minute to think about it. Obviously it was _exactly_ like him, since he was the one that was doing it.

He'd been, even Luke would remind him from time to time, a particularly adorable kid. _All the neighbor ladies used to say it wasn't fair how pretty you was and you wasn't even a girl_, was one of Luke's favorite taunts. _If it wasn't for me, they would have put you in dresses and pigtails._ His heroic cousin, protecting him even when he was nothing more than a toddler. (Bo reckoned Luke's accounts might just have been the slightest bit exaggerated.)

_The easy one_, his Aunt Lavinia used to say, contrasting him to Luke. _Don't give no sass, so sweet. A charmer._

Teachers, back in the first and second grade, used to pat him on the head a lot, and somehow or other he always found himself getting offered cookies. Even Uncle Jesse used to sit him on that wide knee and bounce him around long after Luke got too big for any such thing.

He wasn't complaining about his childhood; it was just about as perfect as any could be. Sure, he'd had no parents and his jeans had been hand-me-downs with Luke's holes at the knees, but those were sunshine-warm days, refreshed by pitchers of sweet lemonade. He'd simply have liked to point out to everyone around him that it wasn't nineteen-sixty anymore, and he wasn't three feet tall with fingers too short and spastic to properly tie his own shoes. In a few weeks he was going to be eighteen, legally an adult. The people around him might not like it, and they could just keep on saying how everything he did wasn't like him if they wanted to, but it would just be a mistake on their part. He hadn't changed, he'd simply grown up, and his family would just have to get used to it. Seemed to him like Luke got a lot more respect at this age.

"Look at all the white hair he's getting." Daisy, endlessly lecturing him. It was a good thing she was so sweet about it, still patting his arm with every word, or he wouldn't have the patience for it. "He don't need you giving him no more, not when he's already so worried about Luke."

Well, the oldster didn't exactly have a patent on worrying about Luke; they all did that in relatively equal measure. But Bo had himself an advantage. According to his heart, Luke was doing as well as any of them – maybe, if the part of him that was trying to convince itself to quit school and enlist in the military could be trusted, even better than the rest of them – but his kin didn't know that. So instead of shrugging his female cousin off his shoulder and telling her to stop fussing, he tipped his chin to kiss her soft hair one last time before returning his attention to the road.

* * *

Plans, he was always full of them. Back in Hazzard they used to halfway work, too, but—

"Stay down," he hollered at Antonopoulos, the cherry who didn't seem to know better than to keep his body low when there were bullets whizzing by overhead.

—here, in Vietnam, in the Marines, he wasn't anybody's idea of a brilliant strategist. He was just a fool that was caught, rather literally at the moment, between a rock and a hard place.

"Right flank!" he heard from over in the trees to his left; at least he wasn't the only fool caught out here. "Duke!" That was Sergeant Paczkowski, leading the 39th Infantry. A man Luke had come only across once or twice, and whose voice he'd never been so glad to hear before in his life. "Retreat."

Interesting order, one he couldn't swear he'd been issued even once over his military career. His Duke pride, if he'd had any left, ought to have bristled at such a thing.

But that had been his first foolish plan, hatched all the way back in boot camp – to hold onto being a Duke no matter what the Marine Corps tried to make him – and it had also been his first failure. All the characteristics that might have marked him as a member of one particular Hazzard County clan were gone now. He'd gripped so hard at the grains of everything that had once defined him that they'd slipped from between his fingers – in the Atlantic Ocean, in the mountains and valleys of the jungle, in a boxing ring at Cam Ranh Bay. One of his more recent brilliant plans had included accepting a promotion that he'd earned by merit of survival, then alternately begging for missions that were nothing more than death traps and letting his men rest, which tempted them to hurt each other.

Luke signaled to his men to start crawling back behind the line of Paczkowski's more heavily armed Marines. "Stay down, Antonopoulos," he mumbled like a prayer, didn't breathe until the cherry made it to relative safety. Stayed where he was until each of the other five men in his squadron had scuttled back to where they wouldn't be targets, then let all the air out of his lungs. _Retreat_. Felt cowardly, felt like he was abdicating his responsibilities, felt like he was nothing more than a fool who had gotten in over his head.

He might not feel like there was much Duke left in him, but he still had his obligations to home and hearth, and deep inside of him he carried the most precious thing he'd ever been given responsibility for. Untouched by everything he'd seen and been for the past year and a half, protected against harm and hardness, beating there under his ribcage, was Bo's heart. Aunt Lavinia had sworn it to be true and though he'd scoffed at the notion on most of the days of his life, he reckoned that right about now returning that heart to its rightful owner counted as the best reason he could think of to make sure that he not only survived, but that he also made it home.

Besides, he thought as he dodged left and right through evasive maneuvers, running between bullets until he found the shelter of a tree, what good was a warrior that wasn't willing to fire his weapon for fear of killing his enemy?

* * *

Sick, from the cramp in his stomach to the ache of his bones, he was sick. Up was down and then back up again two more times before it all stopped with a screech, the shrillness of which would make Daisy jealous.

"Bo!" from a distance like it had been shouted down a tube. "Are you all right?"

No, he was not all right, he was on all fours in the leaves, sick, his stomach giving up what little had been in it, seeing as he hadn't eaten dinner yet. But there had been that cheap soda at the garage, and it had only made his stomach twist all the harder.

"Someone call an ambulance," came from that same distance; Cooter backlit, which gave the man an oddly angelic look.

"No," Bo managed to croak. He was fine, or would be.

"You don't look so good," his friend pointed out, but it was getting better already. Mostly, anyway, now that the spinning had stopped, his stomach had settled, and he could sit back on his knees. In the dirt, he realized, which wasn't entirely news but somehow came as a surprise all the same.

More soil crumbling down to hit him in the knees and he held up a hand both to wave off the notion that he needed medical assistance, and to keep Cooter from trying to stumble down to where he sat.

In the ravine on the side of the old Pine Knot Road, where Bo, Falcon and all, had rolled hood over hubcaps. He turned to look then, in the last of the light, at Luke's car wedged up against a solid oak, wheels – about the only recognizable part of the otherwise misshapen hunk of metal – up in the air.

"I'm fine," he managed to mutter.

The passenger side door was open – funny, he couldn't remember how that had come to be, whether he'd opened it himself, or whether it had swung wide on its hinges somewhere in the midst of the tumbling. Couldn't quite remember getting out, either, whether that had been voluntary or the accidental result of the oddly lurching halt to which the car had finally come.

"Bo! You okay, man?" had to be Dobro, laced as the words were with amusement.

"Fine," he muttered again, grabbing onto a half-dead kudzu vine to help pull himself to his feet. The distance from where he stood to the edge of the road wasn't all that great, but it was a climb, and of course it was all loose dirt now that a car had gone tumbling down it. A bit slick, and his legs weren't quite steady yet.

"That was the coolest thing I ever saw," Dobro congratulated, making Bo's teeth grind against each other. He really ought to stop that; the last thing the family needed was to spend money on a dentist visit to treat his chipped teeth. "You was flying."

Yes, he had been. Skimming over the road without hardly touching it, passing Dobro's pretty little Mustang like it was no more than a tricycle.

"You—" but it took too much effort to talk and climb both, especially when his ribs were sore enough to keep him from breathing anything but shallowly. Besides, what would have come out of his mouth next just would have sounded like blame, and it wasn't, or shouldn't be. Sure, Dobro had swerved at him, but it wasn't anything that hadn't happened every Friday night since the both of them had taken to racing. It was his own foolishness, his desire not to chug home with any dings in Luke's car (and if it had been a noble intention, the result was a heap at the bottom of the hill) that had made him overreact. It was his hands on the wheel, his foot mashed down on the accelerator of a car that was already moving faster than the road, slick with fallen leaves, could accommodate, and it was his own fool stupid impudence that had caused the accident. It was also his last minute application of the brakes, in combination with incredible, unbelievable luck, that had allowed him to take to the air _between_ the two huge old maples, either of which would have bent the car around itself like it was no more than tin foil. And then he got even luckier to have found nothing but soft dirt until the car's momentum had slowed enough that the final impact didn't hurt him. Much.

"Here." That was Brody, finally showing his face there at the top of the ravine. "Give me your hand." A few more scrambling steps, and his long fingers caught Brody's thick and heavy ones. "Easy now," the older man said. "I got you."

And that, finally, brought home the full realization of what he'd done. Because those words (_I've got you, I won't let you fall, take it easy_) were the sort of thing Luke had said to him all his life. Sometimes they could sting with sarcasm, but mostly they were gentle, a genuine offer of respite when events had gone against them. Luke, who had always taken care of him, was nowhere to be found, and it simultaneously made his heart heavy with sadness and his head light with relief that his cousin wasn't here to see what he'd gone and done this time.

"Bo! Bo!"

"Oh, no," he mumbled, even as Brody pulled him up over the lip of the ravine to stand on the solid ground of Pine Knot Road. "Enos."

"Sorry, buddy," Brody answered, slapping him on the back in a sad sort of companionship that he might have appreciated if the guy's hand hadn't landed on one of the more bruised sections of his body. "I called him on the CB right after I saw you go over the ledge. Figured he might be calling in the coroner next." Funny, funny guys he chose to spend his Friday nights with.

"Bo," came at him one more time in that shrill squeal that rivaled any girl's in pitch and tone. "You all right, buddy?"

"Fine, Enos." Every time he said it, it got a little more true.

"You don't look so good," the ever-helpful Cooter repeated. "Still a little green around the gills."

But it was too dim out here by far for anyone to be saying what color any part of him was. Other than that there was no red, so he wasn't bleeding, at least not anywhere he could see. And he reckoned that if he was gushing blood down his back, someone would have mentioned it by now.

"Come on," was a hyper young deputy, pulling at his hand. Exasperation followed when Bo dug in his heels instead of letting himself be propelled toward the waiting cruiser, a reflective beacon amongst the dust covered and hastily parked cars of his friends. But the deputy should have known better, coming from liquor-running stock himself. No self-respecting moonshiner would get into anything resembling a cop's car on purpose. "Bo! You got to go to the hospital!"

Yeah, that was the only idea worse than letting himself get carted off to jail.

"Ain't got to," he pointed out. "Besides, ain't no need, I'm fine."

"You could have a head injury!" Or brain damage, but if he did, it had occurred sometime before he'd flown off the side of the road in Luke's car. Any fool that put the tiniest amount of consideration into the sequence of events would have to agree about that part.

"I didn't even hit my head." Every other part of him had banged against something hard, but he'd done a real fine job of protecting his skull.

It took a lot of standing on the side of the road, following Enos' finger as it traced silly paths in the near darkened air, reciting his name, his address, and all his numbers up to seven (which might just have been as many as old Enos knew anyway) before the good-hearted deputy agreed to let him go home instead of the emergency room. Bo was, after all, eighteen now and perfectly capable of making these decisions for himself.

"I still got to file a incident report, though," the deputy said.

"No you ain't," Bo suggested. Because he _was_ eighteen now, legally an adult, and any investigation that the report might spark could lead to the more permanent sort of trouble that followed some guys around. "Ain't nobody hurt nor no one's property damaged." Except Luke's car, and his cousin wasn't here to file any charges against him – which he wouldn't have done anyway. Old Luke just would have made his life miserable for a decade or two, what with the extra chores and special projects that would have been cooked up for the expressed purpose of getting even. And then, when his heart softened with time, Luke would let him off the hook. As soon, of course, as he built a new car, from the ground up.

"He's right, Enos," might have been the first useful words that Cooter had contributed all night. "Ain't no reason to go wasting your time writing nothing up, especially since it'd have to be typed." And everyone in town knew that such a task would keep the poor deputy up all night. "In triplicate," got capped off by a solemn nod.

"Um, right. I guess if no one's planning to file a complaint, there ain't no need for a report."

"No need at all," Cooter agreed while Brody delivered a swift kick to Dobro's shin before the fool could amuse himself by claiming he stood ready to lodge a complaint against Bo.

"All right then," Enos offered. "You take care now, Bo." And then he was walking over to his car, starting the engine and driving off as the lights in his roof rack spun in dizzying red loops.

Only after the law was gone did Bo go over and rest himself on the fender of Cooter's Challenger. Head in his hands for a second as he remembered Daisy's powerful suggestion that he didn't need to go worrying Jesse right now, not when the man was busy aging and going gray.

"What's in going to take to put her back together, Coot?" And, maybe more importantly, how long would it take? No one knew precisely when Luke would be back, but Bo reckoned that the car had better be back in one piece within the next couple of years or so.

"Ain't nothing gonna do that now," his friend said, coming to stand next to him and drape a meaty arm across his shoulders. Funny how the man could reek of sweat even if the temperature probably hadn't crested fifty degrees today. "Might as well leave her where she lies."

Well, they couldn't do that. Even if the Falcon was dead, she deserved a proper burial (or crushing) in the junk yard.

"There ain't no reviving her?" came out as something approaching a whine, and it was right about then that their good friends Dobro and Brody made their excuses and got while the going was good. Wasn't either of them prepared to see a grown man cry, even if that grown man had only achieved adulthood within the past couple of weeks. And of course they had no way of knowing that he'd long since made promises to himself about men, their pride and public tears. He had no plans on letting anyone see him cry.

"We'll know more tomorrow when I haul her up out of there. No," and a shove against his shoulder interrupted the protest he hadn't even had time to spit out. "We ain't gonna try it tonight. It's too dark now, and besides you _still_ don't look too good. You gonna swear to me you ain't got no head injury before I take you home?"

If it would somehow ward off the inevitable Jesse Duke lecture, he'd confess to being on his deathbed. But he wasn't and even if he had been, there'd still be those deeply disappointed old-man eyes that he'd have look into and make his confessions.

"I swear," he said, hand up like he was in a court of law. Got him a nod and the door opened for him, because apparently a man who didn't look so good couldn't be trusted to let himself into the car.

And once he was inside he mostly slumped into his own corner anyway, hand holding his head – which might just have been the only part of him that didn't hurt – and eyes closed against the bump and sway as Cooter got the car moving.

"I reckon you're probably pretty glad old Lukas ain't here right now, but I'd be mighty glad to see his face."

He took a deep breath, then let it back out. "How come?" he asked, even if he really didn't much want to talk about Luke right now.

"Because I ain't half the man he is," came his answer. "Not when it comes to looking out for you."

"Neither am I," he had to admit, and then remind himself all over again about how he didn't ever plan to let anyone see him cry over missing Luke.


	21. Part Two, Chapter Twenty

**Chapter Twenty**

_December 1972_

Even the ride out of Cam Ranh on the freedom bird wasn't anything he could look back on with any fondness, tainted as it was with his ongoing concern that the chopper could be turned around at any time, could divert only slightly from its flight path to Saigon and he'd be right back in the middle of the war.

The rumors had circulated for a couple of months and he'd just about stuck his fingers in his ears so he wouldn't have to hear them anymore. Wouldn't have been fair to keep the guys in his squadron from speculating and dreaming, just like Ackley and Horn had done during his first days in the jungle, but he hadn't wanted to listen to it so he'd put some distance between himself and the words.

Even when the six of them got recalled from a mission and stationed at base for a few days, he steadfastly refused to pay any attention to the gossip that circulated about the Vietnamization of the war and how recon boys just weren't needed anymore. As far as he would let himself think, he still had almost two months left of his thirteen month tour here, and that was assuming he didn't opt for a second one so he could make his way to being a civilian that much quicker. Besides, the way he had it figured, this stay at Cam Ranh was for the sole purpose of giving Marcek a few days to try to wear down his resistance and nag him about getting back in the ring. Daily summonses to the man's office and at least if it had been summer he might have appreciated the air conditioning. By now his body had adjusted enough to the South Asian climate that he felt the slight coolness and the dry edge to the December air and wondered how it had been that less that a year ago he'd found January to be sweltering.

"Sergeant Duke," was the Lance Corporal sent to fetch him. "Lieutenant Marcek wants to see you, sir." He could set his watch by the kid's flushed face showing up each day to find him in his barracks or digging trenches or running laps around the perimeter.

Might have been the fourth or fifth time he reported to his superior that the unvarying entreaty to fight "just one more time" got preempted just long enough for some papers to be handed over to him.

"That's good news there," he got told. "Good enough that maybe you'll reconsider that inter-service match. You could take Davidson with one hand behind your back." And if that was supposed to be encouragement, Marcek hadn't learned a single dang lesson from what had happened last month with Sinclair.

"I ain't interested in fighting," and if the papers that were in his hand represented some sort of a bribe, then maybe he'd have himself a bit of leverage. Because he kept expecting to be brought up on insubordination charges for refusing to box, but with any luck he wouldn't be alone in the brig, not when his superior officer's attempts at bribery got brought to light.

"Duke, I'm not going to pretend to understand you. But, just your luck, I'm not going to hold it against you, either." Silence, the two of them facing off without a word passing between them. "Aren't you going to look at your orders?"

Not if he didn't have to. "Soon as I get back to the barracks," he promised.

"Suit yourself," was just the officer calling him a fool.

And he had been, because as soon as he'd found a deserted corner of the compound and squinted his eyes against the glare to read what had been handed to him, he crumpled the papers back up and jammed them into his pocket, then took to running laps around the camp. Sure, what he'd seen were his orders to go back stateside and immediately report to Camp LeJeune for further assignment, but printed orders were nothing to believe in. Heck, he'd read several-hundred-page textbooks dedicated to war – his favorite had always been the Civil War, of course, but he'd studied all of them from the time of the revolution – and not a one of them stated facts as they really were. War was a world of sneakiness and trickery, where the most trustworthy things were the bullets, mortars, grenades and mines that would unerringly blow a man to bits. Yes, he had papers that said he could go back to The World, but he believed in them even less than he believed in Santa Claus.

He'd packed up the ratty clothes he had left anyway, and two days later he was on that chopper, the one that he kept expecting to arc to starboard and take him back to the depths of the jungle. After that he transferred to a propeller plane that he reckoned might take him to Cambodia instead of Tokyo, and when he landed safely in Japan and got transferred to a jumbo jet that struck out east over the Pacific, he finally figured that this might just be real.

The letter-writing had started then, and stretched on through the night that followed. Cramped into a small seat while everyone around him quieted then closed their eyes to dream their hopeful dreams, leaving him without enough elbow room to fill the paper he was writing on all the way out to the margins, so he wrote narrow letters full of wide promises. Miracles and marvels that he swore he'd perform if only he made it all the way home to Hazzard; livestock he'd raise and sell, crops he'd plant, grow and harvest all by himself, a lumber mill that he'd build on the south quadrant of the Duke property that would earn them thousands of dollars each month. On weekends he'd take the orphans out to the fair and repair the crumbling houses of widow ladies; he'd be eternally patient with his younger cousins and work so hard that his uncle would never have to lift a finger again.

Each letter got written, folded, stuffed into an envelope to be addressed later, because he wasn't even sure who they were for, not yet. Bo, Uncle Jesse, the Deacon, God?

Last letter he planned to write, because he could feel the initial descent as the flight swept gently toward its next layover.

"Dear Candy," it began—then stuttered, stumbled, stalled right there. He knew what he'd meant to write; while all those other letters had been tripping off of his fingers without any effort at all, he'd been thinking about this one. The one that told the girl he'd left behind, the one who had turned some of his emptiest days into nights full of love, that he was on his way back and hoped she'd be willing to forgive his foolishness in sneaking off like a coward. It was to be bursting with promises that he'd never do it again, that now that the war was over for him he'd be an ideal boyfriend, and if she'd have him, husband…

The one that would have been full of lies.

He'd left her because she couldn't stand to watch him get hit in the face, worried too hard over bruises and bumps, fussed over a split lip. The man she'd wanted was one untouched by violence, an innocent fellow who hadn't been shot at nor shot back, who hadn't leveled another man with his fist or killed someone, either through negligence or deliberation. The person she'd loved was no more than a boy, country raised and – moonshining aside – fresh and innocent as dew glowing in the morning sunrise.

He was none of those things, not anymore. And wouldn't ever be again.

His head dropped then, eyes closed so he wouldn't have to see the greeting he'd written on the yellow pad balanced on his knee. Hands scrubbing through his hair grown long and unruly again, and he didn't cry, but his body shook with the violence of the realization about promises he shouldn't make because they simply amounted to deceit. While all the people around him were coming to life with the recognition that they were about to land on home soil, Luke folded into himself and didn't move though the jolt of wheels on runway, the bumpy ride over asphalt, stayed still until the captain announced they'd arrived at their destination and everyone had to disembark now.

When he finally found his feet, retrieved his duffel from the overhead compartment and made his way to the terminal, he threw the entire wad of paper that represented his whole night's work into the first trash can he could find, finding a grim satisfaction in noticing that the gray-suited man behind him dumped what was left of his coffee in right after them. Nothing left but a smeared mess, and that described Luke Duke perfectly.

* * *

"You want to rethink that, boy?"

There was no right answer to that. Yes he did or no he didn't – those incredulous blue eyes were going to go popping out of his uncle's hotly flushed face either way. Followed by the yelling, the finger sending him backing toward a corner, the threat of the whipping that he was too old for a couple of months ago when he was still seventeen, but might be paradoxically just the right age for now. If the rigid posture of the man advancing on him was any indication.

"Uncle Jesse," he reasoned, or started to anyway.

"Don't you _Uncle Jesse_ me," got spat right back at him. Which was going to make explaining his point of view particularly difficult, considering that he couldn't call his uncle by name. "Now I don't want to hear no more about it."

"Uncle Jesse, that ain't fair." Oh, those words might hasten the whip in its progress toward his backside, but they also spoke the truth and he'd been both nursed and weaned on honesty. "You ain't letting me talk."

"I let you talk already, boy. You didn't say one single word that made sense." Or one single word that his uncle liked was more like it. And that was only because he hadn't been allowed to finish. "Talking about dropping out of school, and you don't even know how lucky you are to get the chance to go all the way through high school. Used to be—"

Yeah, he knew all about the used-to-bes, though apparently he was going to be treated to a list of them again. Used to be Hazzard's school system stopped at eighth grade because there wasn't any money for a qualified teacher at the secondary level. Used to be that kids with the means could get an education by catching a bus down to Capitol City or a train to Atlanta. Long hours of travel each day because school was just that important, but Dukes could never afford that kind of luxury anyway. Uncle Jesse didn't have any choice in the matter; by fourteen he was in the farm's fields on a full time basis because there was nothing else he could be doing, and it wasn't until five years later that government funding ensured that every Hazzard child had the opportunity to get a full education. Bo's daddy had been in one of the earliest graduating classes and he'd be turning over in his grave if he knew—

"Uncle Jesse." It wasn't polite to interrupt, and all the education he had ever needed to learn that little fact came when he was a small boy sprawled over the knee of the man in front of him. But invoking the name of his daddy when Jesse hadn't even heard his whole pitch, well that just led down entirely the wrong path. The sort that ended in a whole lot of hollering without the tiniest modicum of communication. "I ain't walking away from an education, just school. I'm still gonna learn stuff, but it'll be better, more useful stuff. And I'll get paid to do it."

Skeptical look on the old man's face, mixing in with the anger that'd been there all along. Daisy, smart girl, had retreated to her room when she saw this little thundercloud building. It started over nothing of any importance, at least that was Bo's opinion on the matter. Just a temporary memory lapse about how he was meant to pick his girl cousin up from where she was helping Mrs. Byrne in the library that afternoon, and somehow or other instead of Bo, it had been Cooter Davenport that brought her home at the end of the day. Wasn't entirely Bo's fault, not when he'd been sent out to deliver hay bales to the Parkers up the lane anyway, then gotten distracted by Harley, who'd wanted to show him the new foal. He would have remembered that he had someplace else to be eventually, but before he could, there was that frustrated voice booming over the CB airwaves loud enough to wake the dead (or make it from where the pickup was parked in the Parkers' drive all the way into the confines of their barn) calling him back to the farm, this minute.

Daisy was home, perfectly safe, and not even upset. "I got finished early and Cooter was heading out in this direction anyways," she'd explained, but it wasn't enough. Not when this thunderhead had been building between the two Duke men ever since that day he'd come home dizzy after leaving Luke's Falcon in a heap, or maybe it went back to that morning in Principal Parnell's office. Then again, it might have been brewing since that graduation party of Daisy's, when he'd been driven back to the farm covered in dirt and bruises, or it might even have started close to a year and a half ago, when the old man had found him demolishing the half-built dog pen. Regardless of its origins, it was inevitable that the rain would pour down punctuated by rumbles and crashes, and in the middle of it all uncontrolled electricity would be flying in every direction. Best that his sweet cousin sought the shelter of her room before all of that could reach a dangerous pitch. But he could hear her in there, noisily banging into the furniture, or maybe she was dropping books onto her floor. Didn't matter how she was accomplishing it, the girl was just nonverbally reminding the both of them that they weren't alone, that they were kin, and that this kind of fussing was hurting her ears and her heart.

Not that either of them could do a thing about it now, not when one set of words had piled up on some others until what they had created between them was a top-heavy jumble that had no alternative but to come crumbling down of its own weight.

"What exactly was you planning on doing, boy?" And there it was, his uncle finally asking the question he'd been trying to answer all along. Too bad the tone of it all but accused him of being crazy.

"Getting a real-life education." Deep breath, shoulders high, chest out. There was no going back now, not when he'd already blurted out the first half of it. "Like Luke is."

Yep, there came that finger, poking into his chest until he took a step back, followed by another one. Shouldn't work anymore, not now that he'd reached eighteen and adulthood, not now that he'd grown tall enough to look down to see every silver hair on the man's head. Daisy was right about that part, their uncle wasn't getting any younger. And Bo was only trying to help.

"Young man—"

"Now Uncle Jesse, listen." Words tumbling out in a rain-swollen waterfall. No going back, so he might as well barrel forward at full speed. "It would be a good thing, really. You know how hard it's been for Daisy to find any kind of a job that she can hold onto around the farm's schedule," bang from the girl's room at that one, "and you ain't getting no younger. This way, won't neither of you have to work, because me and Luke will both be earning money to send home. You could retire." If the old man lived that long. Right about now the stripe of scarlet across his cheeks was pretty convincing evidence of an imminent heart attack. After, that was, he commenced to kill Bo.

"Oh, so you reckon it ain't enough that you wrecked Luke's car?" Totaled it, actually. Cooter had been mighty accurate in his initial assessment that it was beyond repair. As far as Bo knew it was now just a twisted hulk sitting in the junkyard, though it might have gotten crushed in the meantime. Just one more reason he needed to be earning money: to replace the Falcon, preferably with something sexier than Cooter's Challenger. "You got to break his heart, too?"

Those last words just didn't make any sense. Not when what he was planning to do would bring the Duke boys closer together. But it was hard to say anything of intelligence, particularly when he was being backed around the kitchen table. Eyes darting over his shoulder to gauge where the obstacles were, then back up because he was a man, making a man's decision, and that meant he had to look his uncle in the eye. "I ain't got no plans on hurting Luke, Uncle Jesse. I'd just be following in his footsteps."

"His footsteps," got parroted back at him in that tone of voice that called him a fool without ever actually saying the word. "You think that would make your cousin happy? You just think again, boy." And just like the conversation was going in circles, so were he, his uncle, and that wide finger that had never stopped boring into his chest. Might just leave a mark if his uncle kept it up though it had never quite come to that before. Maybe because most times he'd seen the man this put out, there had been Luke's chest, standing in front of his, ready to take more than half the punishment. Could the old man really blame him for wanting to find his way closer to his cousin? "Do you have the first idea why he went into the service in the first place?"

"He got drafted." They all knew that, there wasn't any two ways about it. "He went because he had to."

"That's right." And everything froze right there. Good thing, too, because he didn't suppose a man his age ought to be caught doing backwards laps around the kitchen under the threat of being poked. "He went because he figured he had to. Oh, he could have tried for a deferment. He talked about that. But he didn't do it, and you know why?"

No, he didn't know. As far as his cousin had made clear, there had never been any alternative to him becoming a member of the armed services. Bo had gotten sorely disappointed after he spent the better part of the spring of 1971 waiting for the conniver to figure a way to get out of it, and now Jesse was announcing that Luke had considered some sort of an escape plan after all.

"Because if he didn't fight it, if he let Uncle Sam have him without a struggle, then he knew there was no way you could get drafted." Head spinning now, as if those slow laps around the table had just caught up with him. Fuzzy logic or a dizzy brain, and he couldn't quite grasp what his uncle was trying to tell him. "See, it takes at least two men to run this here farm. And if Luke was in the service, you'd get an automatic II-C deferment. They'd turn you around at the first medical exam and send you straight home. Luke went so's you wouldn't have to, boy."

"But," he wanted to be angry, he really did. That Luke would go off thinking his kid cousin wasn't up to serving his country. "Why—" He wanted to hate those same protective ways that had made Luke look after him all his life.

"Because, you dang fool, he didn't want you to get hurt. He didn't want to take the risk of you getting killed, or maybe even worse, killing someone. You really think it's that easy to go to war? You figure that all Luke does is them things he writes home to you about? Like skydiving, and boxing," his uncle's voice took on a rhythmic quality, and that finger that had been in his chest was now being used to tick off each activity on the fingers of his opposite hand. "Marching up and down the mountains, and putting bugs down his buddies' shirts, then going off to Taiwan for a week," it was almost soothing, like being sung to. Like Aunt Lavinia used to do when he'd been young enough to get away with crawling into her lap after he'd been punished for sassing or cussing or just plain disobeying. He'd get hollered at, his chin would dip and his ears would burn a hot red as the tears started to drip, rolling down his nose to splash on the floor. His uncle would name his punishment, then give him five minutes to report for it and walk out the front door. Bo was free then, to tug himself up onto his aunt's knee, to let her put her arms around him and explain that the most important lessons were hard and sometimes painful to learn. After that she'd pull his head onto her shoulder and sing him the old mountain songs until his breathing settled down to normal and his eyes closed.

"Those is just the things he's willing to tell you, boy." Uncle Jesse, bringing him back to the here and now. "I know you seen the pictures in the papers, and probably even seen some of the war on that infernal television down to the garage where your friend Cooter lets it run all day. You really figure them boys over there carry them guns to shoot deer? You think all them rounds strapped across their chests is for decoration? It's a _war_, boy. Even if you got lucky enough never to actually kill no one, you reckon it's easy to point a gun at another man and know you're the one thing that could separate him from his life, his future, whatever family he might have? Even if a man is your enemy, it ain't no kind of pleasure to go killing him."

Sometimes after a tirade he'd even fall asleep in Lavinia's arms, and somehow it would be all right that he showed up late for the extra chores he'd been assigned because he'd get led there by the hand of his aunt. _He was wrung out_, she'd say, and Jesse would just nod and hand over whatever tool Bo was meant to use. He'd put himself to work and after a few minutes his uncle's wide hand would pat him in the middle of that blonde halo on his head. _You understand what you did wrong, don't you boy?_ he'd ask and Bo would nod. _You ain't gonna do it again now, are you?_ and he'd shake his head – _no, sir_. Then before long, Luke would get assigned to help him finish the task so it'd get done before dark.

"Luke reckoned you didn't need to go through that, so he didn't even try to get himself a deferment. You go joining the service, and what will his last year and a half have been for, huh, boy? You just think about that."

Aunt Lavinia had been gone now for more years of his life than she was here, and even if she hadn't he was far too old to go crawling into her lap, despite the fact that his head was dropping, his ears were burning red, and tears were threatening to drip out of his eyes. He was a man now, he had his pride and just about nothing else, and he didn't want anyone to see him cry. He reckoned the best thing he could do for himself would be to turn on his heel and run right on out of here, across the soft dirt of the farmyard and the fields and into the woods where the tangled roots and jutting stones would try to trip him up, and beyond that until he got to the creek. From there he could turn north and jog until trail ran to brambles, and wouldn't anyone follow him there. He could be alone until he ran out of tears, and then he'd come back home, chin up, and face whatever Jesse wanted to dish out at him like a man.

"Easy now." Except it was too late for all of that, because he was already tangled up in warm arms, his tears falling on the soft shoulder of the man who had raised him, wide hand weaving through his blonde curls, his body being rocked like he was no more than a little tyke. "It'll be all right, boy. It'll be just fine."

* * *

"You're a boxer." Not asked, stated. Not that the Captain could be blamed for that. He was just reading Luke's record and taking it for the gospel truth. Just the facts, that was all the Marine Corps had bothered to document about him and he supposed that was for the best. _Too much pride to turn down a promotion that he didn't deserve_ and _unwilling to aim his weapon directly at the enemy_ was the sort of information that the man in front of him didn't need to know right now.

But, "Not any more, sir," was. He had no plans on getting back in the ring, no matter which side of the Pacific he was on.

Which was for now, the right side. Cardinal directions were hard to make sense of when east became west somewhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and if he'd been just about as far east as a man could get when he was in Asia, here he was, east again. On the coast of North Carolina, where the air was miserably dank, and he loved it because it was cold. Goose bumps on his arms like old and long-absent friends, his breath aglow in the morning light as visible proof that against all the odds, he'd kept on living.

Only a day here so far, just long enough to embrace the brackish smell of seawater that had taunted him last fall when he'd spent endless hours trying to swim through it without swallowing more than a few mouthfuls. A day to love the bickering of seabirds cresting over a bed of foamy water, to listen and look and feel without concern about what might come dropping out of the sky or blasting out of the earth at him, a day to perform mundane but heavy work for the sole purpose of exercising his muscles and pleasing his superiors. A day so close to the way he'd been raised that he could almost hear the livestock shifting restlessly in the farmyard and smell the wood smoke wafting out of the chimney because Daisy's thin frame was always cold no matter how many sweaters she wore.

One day only, sandwiched by two nights in which he'd slept on what amounted to a pad tossed over a narrow metal frame with supports that poked at his shoulders, hips and knees with every movement, but he'd rarely shifted at all. It was dark here, the kind that wrapped a man up in her folds and cradled him safely until the sun saw fit to rise again, the kind that could be trusted not to erupt into blasts and detonations and the ghostly drifting light of illumination rounds streaked through with tracers.

"Aced Jumpmaster School."

"Yes, sir," he had, and his Pathfinder course, too. But a jumper was only as good as his chute, and if not for a better man, Luke would have been nothing more than flesh and bone scattered throughout the thick jungle undergrowth. His record, of course, didn't reflect that either.

"Good endurance, quick runner. Lousy swimmer." Nice of Captain Blevins to remind him of every last one of his qualities. "Stubborn. Resistant. Looks like you had a rough boot camp, Sergeant."

A snort, couldn't hold it back though he'd halfway tried, escaped from his nose. Yeah, it had been a nightmare. Light sleep, little food, short showers, no privacy, Staff Sergeants hollering in his ears and then there were those epic extracurricular battles between him and Lewis. Rough enough that he'd been broken over a few pushups in the cold surf and some carefully chosen words about his mother. Oh, it had been just awful – and he'd been a prideful fool, thinking it was so important to assert his independence from the Corps and from a superior officer.

But that was before his free fall through the sucking air over a half-burned jungle had been stayed by one man with superior rank, and before another one had let himself be taken by bullet so that the younger guys in his care would survive. Before he'd achieved commanding rank himself, and saved and lost some men of his own. When he'd had a youth's luxury of foolish vanity.

"It wasn't much of nothing." It had only been the front half of boot camp anyway, before Lewis had gone and really sucker punched him by challenging him into becoming a big, bad, brave recon man. "Just a misunderstanding."

"Three pages worth," the smirking Captain informed him as he flipped through the file.

Good old Staff Sergeant Lewis was nothing if not thorough. Probably wrote down in excruciating detail how he'd rode that smart-mouthed Hazzard kid until he'd been nothing but a crying mess lying in the sand while the waves washed over him.

"You got any hidden talents we ain't found yet, Duke?"

Well, there was the moonshining, but seeing as the man in front of him worked for the government, it didn't seem his wisest course of action to go confessing to anything.

"I'm a hell of a driver," was a much more appropriate admission. "Ain't never lost a back-road pick-up race yet." Whether it was against the fools he called his friends or the ones that carried badges.

Earned himself another smirk from the man in front of him who looked more like a school principal than a Marine. Made Luke wonder how long it had been since the Captain had seen action, or whether he ever had. Maybe he was one of those guys who'd come in as a commissioned officer by virtue of a college degree, who'd never had to earn his rank by humping over mountains and sleeping in muddy bunkers. No scars anywhere on him and he'd probably never had a succinct little telegram sent home informing his kin that he'd sustained an injury, minor or otherwise.

"You got any interest in becoming a career man?" That would earn rank by sitting behind a desk? Here in LeJeune or down on Parris Island, or if things got really exotic, out in San Diego, pushing papers instead of being back in Hazzard pushing dirt around?

"Not much."

"Duke, I'm not going to lie to you." But it didn't matter how the man had earned those bars on his shoulder, the tips of his fingers still held the strings that controlled Luke's next move. "There's not a lot of good assignments that I can give to you recon guys. I could send you over to West Germany with a peacekeeping mission," which didn't sound too bad, really, "but you're overqualified. Or I could put you on the track to becoming a Platoon Leader or Staff Sergeant, but you're awfully young and you're not interested in being a career man. I've got no good use for you."

"Yes, sir." One day here and if he'd embraced the sunrise, lit with familiar pinks and oranges, if he'd breathed deeply the air that was sweet and cool, he'd still wasted it. Enough time that he could have found himself an hour to write a letter telling his family that he was out of harm's way now, to replace the manic words he'd written during his overseas flight then dumped in the filthy trash can of an otherwise near-immaculate airport terminal half a world away. Maybe something simple like _my squadron's been ordered to stand down out of the war zone. I'll be in the States waiting for my next orders. Don't know how long I'll be here, but if I can get a few days liberty, I might be able to come down and see you all._

But he hadn't because hopes and wishes were heartbreaks waiting to happen, and he needed to wait until they were that much closer to becoming plans before he shared them. Still, he'd have to figure out something to write to his kin by the end of the day, because it sounded like he might not be in the United States for very long.

"You are one lucky bastard, Duke," the Captain was saying, bringing his attention back from where it had wandered. "At least for now. I'm putting you on inactive reserves."

His attempts at speaking came out closer to choking coughs of disbelief.

"Don't go getting too attached to it, though. Things heat up – in 'Nam or Cambodia or anywhere else in the world, and you'll be one of the first guys called back to active duty because you've got special skills, you hear me?"

Throat still knotted around words that wouldn't come, he nodded.

"You can stand down on Wednesday, after you help lead the current Infantry Training class through their basic pathfinding skills."

Three days from now and he'd be done with the Marines, if not forever, at least for the time being. "Yes, sir."

"And Duke," came the command. "Before you leave these premises, I want you to get a proper haircut. No one leaves LeJeune looking like anything but a fine specimen of a Marine."

Figured. There was no way to walk away from the service without carrying its mark with him.


	22. Part Three, Chapter Twenty-one

**Part Three: Running  
Chapter Twenty-One**

_December 1972_

It's like coming out of a nightmare, though it's hard to know whether it's real or if this is one of those times that just feels like waking up, when in reality one dark dream is simply morphing into another.

Because by the time it gets around to happening, after it's gone from prayers to dreams to wishes to recitation as familiar as his times tables (twelve times fourteen is one sixty-eight, and please bring Luke home safe), it's closer to a warning than a promise.

_Your cousin is coming home, Bo. He might be… different from what he was. Just don't go rushing at him. Give him his space._

Makes him wonder what sort of creature they'll be getting back in place of the laid-back, clever, fun-loving boy they gave up. Jesse's acting guarded about the whole thing, like that phone call he got this afternoon contained bad news instead of good, like the person at the other end of the line was a bloodthirsty convict just finishing his prison sentence and rejoining the general population instead of Luke coming home.

"He ain't," words tumble through his head, every last one of them wrong. Foolish words like _sick, crazy, dangerous_, none of which he's ever thought to call his cousin before, at least not with any seriousness. "Hurt or nothing?" Odd how he's willing to suggest that alternative over the others.

Daisy's no help in calming his colorful imagination, not when she's standing there next to him in the shadows cast by the bare bulb in the kitchen ceiling, her eyes just about popping with worry at the possibilities. Dang it, one of the younger Dukes should have been home to pick up the call, or Luke should have waited to make it until dusk settled over the property and the whole family would be inside.

"What are you standing there looking at me with them big eyes for? You can see them peas there that need to be shelled. And Daisy, you best set to making supper or we'll be eating at midnight." Gruff and exaggerating – their uncle must have something to hide if he's barking at them like this. "There ain't nothing wrong with Luke, and don't you go acting like there is."

"But you're the one who said—"

"All I said was to give him room. Now sit and get to work."

Work doesn't stop when he's got a tidy little pile of green peas in front of him, either. There's cleaning to be done, scrubbing the floors and counters and shelves. For such a small house it's got unending surfaces, all of which are apparently too dirty for his cousin – who has spent pretty close to a year sleeping in the mud – to come home to.

"And get after them windows, too," is Jesse's instruction.

They have to break from their tireless work for dinner, to sleep, to do chores, and for him to go to school. Though he does make what he perceives to be a very generous offer of how he can best contribute to their project.

"I could whitewash the porch," with its chipped paint and splintered railings, "If I didn't have to go to school." But a glower is all it takes to send him back to his room for the textbooks that have been flung across Luke's bed out of a habit that he's going to have to break in the next day or so. There's been a truce declared between him and his uncle, but it's strewn with fragile little eggshells that he'd better not go stomping on. Not yet.

So he behaves himself, sits reasonably still through school, though he can't be blamed if his nerves bubble over a bit and the only thing that will calm them is making out with Shelley Carter on the bench right outside the lunchroom. Just enough passion between them to make him lose track of time and show up late to English class, but somehow or other trouble doesn't find him over that little infraction – the generosity of the upcoming holidays or his blonde charm, and he's not too worried about which it is, because he's got enough trouble coming anyway.

He's missed Luke like he misses the sun on overcast days; everything has been a cold and faded shade of dull gray without him. Luke here, back in Hazzard, insisting that their bedroom windows stay open unless the temperature dips below freezing, rolling over onto his back to snore louder than a chainsaw, shoving at his shoulder before even the birds show interest in making their first peeps, he wants that with everything in him. Bo would just, if he could have his druthers, prefer that his cousin could come home to find things exactly like he left them, that all this cleaning they're doing could wipe away the last year and all the foolish deeds contained in it.

* * *

"My boy, my boy." Jesse's holding him so tightly that the man constitutes a crowd all by himself, though Bo and Daisy are close too, and that's before the mob of travelers bumping by them, not at all shy about knocking shoulders. Kids whining because they've been dragged all the way to Atlanta by bus to see the gleaming toys in store windows only to be yanked away from them without getting to play – not knowing that within days those same toys will magically appear under trees and in stockings. Adults shoving because they have other places to be than on this dirty square of concrete under the Greyhound awning that faces Forsyth Street, trapped there the family of four that stands like a stone in the middle of a stream forcing the current to slow and part around them. "My boy," he gets reminded again, or maybe Jesse's assuring himself that Luke belongs to him, not Uncle Sam. A notion that meant something different a year ago when Luke would have wholeheartedly agreed with it; now he's not sure which uncle has a greater claim on the man he's become.

"Jesse," he mumbles; that last bump felt like a deliberately aimed shoulder. He's not a fool and Vietnam isn't so far away that he hasn't heard about how guys coming home in uniform with military haircuts aren't necessarily warmly welcomed in public places. He's never once had doubts about his family or home county, but Atlanta isn't Hazzard. Folks here are infected by the city's flash and glitz; they speed through life believing what they watch on television without slowing down long enough to think it through to remembering that war is as multi-faceted as peace. Decisions get made, good or bad, on both sides of the world. It's just that the microscope under which those choices get made is one way, revealing military flaws while ignoring civilian mistakes. At least that's what he thinks today, right now, when his uncle's heavy arms hold him close enough that he can smell wood smoke mixed with sweat under the lye soap that clings to the fibers of his heavy shirt.

"My boy." Jesse is not in any mood to be rushed, or to change the subject from those two words. And Luke reckons that letting the winter wind blow over his lightly clothed frame feels good enough after a year of sweating that he can put up with the warmth of the body that he's being held close to. "My boy." Finally he gets let go to be held at arm's length. "You're too skinny."

It's one of those ways in which Jesse compensates for the aunt they lost all those years ago, he reckons. Worrying after his nutrition, but it's been ten solid days since his last C-ration meal; he's eaten well and not had dysentery since somewhere over a month ago. It's also one of those things that his uncle can get away with saying because there's no way to answer back, even if it does cross Luke's mind to retort that Jesse's hair is too white.

Daisy has the good grace to save his military-rough tongue from foolishly unleashing itself; she leaps at him with all the faith in the world that she'll be caught. Or maybe she simply falls – those strappy high heels she's wearing can't be easy to balance on. Her hair, teased up in curls like she wouldn't have been caught dead in a few years ago, tickles at his cheek as her arms go around his neck. She clings close for a second, then takes half a step back to look at him; she's considering his hair every bit as much as he's looking at hers. She blinks her eyes against the moisture there, trying to look so grown up in the makeup that would run down her face in black streaks if she gave in to tears.

Looking over her head he can see Bo, sun-lightened hair halfway hiding his face, too tall and broad for the way he stands slouched into himself. Hesitant, nibbling at his lip that's so pink it's got to be chapped. Giving Daisy her turn, playing at being an adult, but when Luke opens an arm to him, Bo joins the hug just like they all know he wants to. Daisy's hand grazes against the bristles of what's left of his hair and she steps back, slightly flushed like she just couldn't help satiating her curiosity about that fuzz, and now she's embarrassed by it. He offers her a lopsided smile and then Bo shifts to take up the space she's just vacated.

Getting hugged by Bo Duke has always been a full-contact sport. Melting into his arms, still just a boy, his head on Luke's shoulder as if that even makes sense now that his cousin's got a few inches on him (and when they get home he's going to have to get Jesse to measure the two of them up against that marked-up molding in the kitchen doorway so they can learn the precise height difference), a quiet mumble of his name that sounds watery, and there's nothing Luke can do but close his eyes and hold on through the assault of emotion.

"I missed you, cousin," he mutters, because the body in his arms feels somehow fragile even if it is so big, because the hitched breathing that he can feel in the boy's barrel of a chest indicates a need to hear it, because it's true. _Don't be sad, Bo_ – the words ricochet like instinct through his mind even if they make no real sense, not when this is supposed to be a cheerful homecoming. _Don't cry_, follows on the initial thought, because Bo is sunshine after a pitch-black night, he's brightness and warmth, and Luke's not even half ready to imagine a world in which his cousin's grin is submersed under tears.

The arms around his neck shift and clutch at him, a hand accidentally finds the stubble that constitutes the hair on the back of his head then backs off just as quickly, seeking purchase somewhere else. "It's okay," he consoles because he knows just how uncomfortable that military haircut can be, how unpleasant to touch. He'd considered, briefly, asking the Marine barber just to take it all off, to be rid of it and start fresh, because a high and tight grows out so awkwardly, top-heavy and unattractive. But in the end he'd gone strictly regulation, because he had no desire to relive that first day in the Corps, when he'd lost his Hazzard life, his home and his hair all in one twenty-four hour period. "Shh," he whispers into the close air between them, though it's not really necessary. Bo is quiet, he's settling down, the heart beating in his chest is steady, and in synch with Luke's.

"Where," he asks, peering through the blonde curls that are in his face to see his uncle still there, close and hovering like there are a few remaining _my boy_s left unsaid, "did y'all leave the truck?" Because it's time they got off this street corner – out of the way of people who don't appreciate the interruption of the rhythm of their lives by a veteran and his family enacting their greeting rituals – and headed back to Hazzard, where he can genuinely be welcomed_ home_.

* * *

"You're cold," he accuses, gets treated to a flat-lipped, eye-rolling headshake. "You are so."

They're in the back of the pickup, at Luke's insistence. "I want to smell the fresh air," he'd said, and Jesse had argued back that they could leave the windows open for him if he rode in the cab, but Luke had been his mule-stubborn self about it, throwing his smelly green duffle bag into the bed of the pickup then crawling right in after it. Pure instinct had sent Bo climbing in to sit next to him.

"Maybe I like being cold," Luke answers him now, pulling a face that mocks his incredulity.

Bo starts tugging at the sleeve of his jacket, an ugly old corduroy thing that's too short for him now anyway. Rolls it back from his shoulders and manages, with some awkward movements, to get it all the way off and offer it to his cousin.

"Bo," gets crabbed at him in that same tone that's called him an idiot his whole life, but he's not buying it. Luke's wearing a military-green shirt that's no more than a thin layer of cotton, and there's absolutely no meat on his bones to compensate against the December chill that's blowing right across their bodies.

"Fine," he mutters, draping his coat across them both like a too-small blanket. Funny how old tough-as-nails sitting over there to his right shuffles over a little closer to him so it can cover more of his skinny chest.

In truth, Bo would be a liar if he didn't admit to appreciating his cousin's obstinacy. A couple of hours – or more than that, because the bus station's on the south side of the city and the traffic is thick – of privacy, even if it is cold and wind-whipped. More than he needs, really, to confess; leaves him too much time for thinking, for toying with words in his head.

"Luke," he starts, because thinking is for paradoxical smart idiots like his cousin, not for men of action like him. Then again, his tongue's not so sure about this _men of action_ thing, stuck exactly where it fell to the bottom of his mouth at the end of saying his cousin's name. Eyes, as dangerously blue as they have ever been, focus on him, waiting for pearls of wisdom (or miserable admissions) to fall from his lips. "It's good to have you here." Stupid words, the kind he'd use on distant kin that have long since moved to Chickasaw and are only visiting for the holidays.

But Luke doesn't seem too worried about it. "It's good to be here," he announces with a smirk and a hand ruffling through blonde hair. Bo would protest – it's a gesture meant for the little boy that he was when Luke first got drafted, not the man he is today – except it brings his cousin a little closer to him. The shared warmth is nice, but even better is the fact that their current proximity makes it next to impossible to look each other in the eye. Which ought to make the task in front of him that much easier.

"Luke," he tries again. "I got something I got to tell you." The pickup slows to stop at yet another traffic light. The car in the lane to their left is blasting that _White Rabbit_ song with the wailing female voice that he's never much cared for, but Luke's fingers pick up the beat, thumping on his own knees. Bo spares a glance over at the car in question to see that it's a hot little foreign number painted midnight black, then turns to catch Luke's eye to see whether he's impressed, but his cousin's too busy staring at the city skyline to notice. Might be just as well that Luke's not too concerned about cars right now.

"Sounds serious," his cousin answers back, his voice thick with that same deep-bass sound that's been resonating through it since they first greeted each other at the bus station. Oddly, though his body is lighter, the tone in which Luke speaks is heavier now than it used to be, less playful than it once was.

"Serious," he repeats. "Yeah, I suppose it is."

Luke shrugs like whatever it is, it couldn't much matter, then slides just that much closer to him.

"Told you you was cold."

"Yeah, well, you also said you got something you got to tell me, so why don't you just stick to that for now." Luke doesn't need those piercing eyes to see right through him; he can do that without them even being fully open.

Deep breath, and he dives in at full speed. "I ain't—I ain't looked after Jesse and Daisy like you asked me to."

There are engines humming as they wind their way forward through the streets, pickup rattling over every seam in the road, horns honking and the low-pitched rumble of trucks jake-braking around them, and through all that he can hear Luke's snort when it comes.

"They seem to have survived just fine, Bo." That voice might be deeper, but it's just as capable of sarcasm as it ever was. "Jesse's hair's gone white though."

"I reckon that's my fault," he confesses. "I ain't exactly been behaving." Another snort from his cousin.

"You wouldn't be you if you did." Pride; Luke's acting like what he's been up to is nothing more than teenaged shenanigans. "I wouldn't worry too much about it, cuz. Jesse's been through worse than you."

"Oh yeah?" Suddenly it's a good, old-fashioned Duke boy competition, where Luke smirks at his inability to keep up. Except this time he's got more in his arsenal than his cousin knows about. "I just about failed all my classes." Which earns him a headshake, one that might as easily be telling him that bad grades are small potatoes as scolding him for his poor performance. No point in taking chances. "I just about got arrested by Enos at Daisy's graduation party." Too close to be sure but if he has to guess, he'd say that Luke's pulling the sort of face that announces that he's not about to take anything involving Enos Strate terribly seriously. "For fighting and underage drinking."

"Wouldn't be a Duke if you didn't rile the law from time to time," Luke answers back. "Besides, you already told me about that one when I was in Taipei." _And you've got to come up with something better than that if you're going to compete with me._ The words don't even need to be said out loud; Bo knows what his cousin is thinking.

"I got suspended for skipping school."

"Not bad. But I done beat you to that one, too."

"Dang it, Luke!"

The pickup jerks to a stop on the side of the road, taking him back to childhood trips in the old Roadmaster that Uncle Jesse used to drive back then. Squabbling in the back seat over whether it was too cold or too hot and did the windows really need to be open, whether Daisy's hair was getting mussed, and the age-old battle of which of them would get stuck in the middle with no window privileges at all. Long about the time the pushing and shoving started up, Jesse'd crank the steering wheel to the right and there'd be that bump that signified them leaving the blacktop. The family would sit there in the dust of the road's shoulder, cars whisking by them while their uncle turned around in his seat to lash out at their misbehavior. _You're too old to go acting like this_, they'd get reminded, and their chins would dip as they mumbled their _yes-sirs_. Too old and none of them had yet crested the double-digits at the time; by now he reckons that he and Luke are old enough to hitchhike back home if their uncle's of a mind to make them.

But it's not Jesse that gets out of the cab; the groan of the door on its hinges indicates it's the passenger side that's getting opened. Daisy's there next to them suddenly, tossing that old blue blanket that's normally spread over the seat's torn vinyl upholstery at them.

"You boys are a pair of fools, sitting out here in the cold," she chastises, but can't help smiling at them. She spreads the blanket over their bent knees, pulling it up to their chins just like Aunt Lavinia would have done a dozen years or so ago, and her hand reaches out to fluff Bo's hair, then pat Luke's cheek. "You look tired," she informs their cousin. "Stay warm back here." Then she's gone, back up front and leaving him and Luke to their privacy. And when he thinks about it, he reckons there was no way their kin could possibly have heard them bickering anyway, not with all the traffic noise around them.

He waits for the sway of the pickup pulling back out into the lanes of traffic, watches the buildings along the side of the road become less densely packed, then their speed starts to increase as they approach the ramp to the interstate before talking again.

"It ain't what I done to Jesse that I got to tell you about, Luke," he admits. All the rest of it has just been a long and painfully slow approach to his doom, anyway.

"Yeah?" his cousin turns toward him from where he's been staring out at the city growing ever smaller behind them. "What did you do to Daisy?"

"Nothing!" he defends, gets chuckled at for being so easy to rile. "Luke, dang it, listen to me." He shouldn't have to work so hard to slip his own neck into the noose. "It's what I done to you."

"All right." Luke's tone is soothing, like Bo has suddenly turned into a half-crazed moonshiner, flintlock in hand with intent to chase him away from where he stumbled onto the wrong side of the mountain. "Tell me what you done to me."

Deep breath, because there's no way around it. He figures that his cousin still has a good hour and a half to cool off from what he's about to hear before they get home where the ground is solid and will support a fistfight.

"I—" it was Dobro's fault, he wants to interrupt himself to say. Because it would be easier if he could, if the two Duke boys could agree that an outside force was to blame, could gang up together and fight until they defeated it. But saying someone else made him do it, well that would be a lie. "I had an accident. In your Falcon. I rolled it," his words are coming out stuttered, "a few times."

Luke's sitting up out of his slouch now, tipping his head away to get a good look at his confessing cousin.

"You get hurt?" Fingers suddenly clutching his jaw, forcing him to stop staring out at the nothing that's whizzing by them and look Luke in the eye. Only for a second, then the intensity of Luke's stare is gone, searching his body for injuries, no doubt.

Again, it would be easier to lie. He could feign a limp or complain of whiplash, and there's no doubt in his mind that Luke would take care of him, babying him by doing all his chores, bringing him his meals and gently nursing him back to health. But his cousin's a first-rate conniver himself, and even if Jesse and Daisy would go along with the deception (a highly unlikely prospect, what with it being a lie and all), it would only be a short matter of time before Luke figured him out. So—

"No more than a bruise or two that healed over within the week." But his cousin's still looking him up and down for that nonexistent gaping wound or broken bone. "I'm fine, Luke," he insists.

"That's good." Luke's head goes back to rest against the window of the cab, eyes closed.

"That's—wait, that's good?" All right, so he had figured that the proximity of their uncle, one clear pane of glass away, would keep an all-out Duke brawl from breaking out on the trip home. But there's nothing preventing Luke from letting him know, in no uncertain terms, that life as he has known it is over and that his every moment outside of school and chores and church will be dedicated to doing any sort of odd job that pays, even if it's only a paltry dollar at a time to clean up after the neighbors' livestock, until he can afford to replace what he destroyed. Or—maybe Luke doesn't yet fully understand the outcome of his little encounter with the ridge on the side of Pine Knot Road. "Luke, the Falcon was totaled. It ain't—there ain't nothing left of it." Other than a bluish, crushed cube sitting somewhere in the junkyard.

"Yeah, I figured," Luke answers with a yawn. "There had to be some reason you was so worried about telling me." A hand comes up to rub at one tired, blue eye. "But as long as you ain't hurt, I can't say as I care a whole lot about the car. Now quit hogging the blanket."

Bo shuffles closer to him, laying an arm across those narrow shoulders. Still rock-hard with powerful muscle, but there's not an extra ounce of meat to spare on the man. "Told you you was cold," he points out.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Luke mumbles, letting his head drop back to rest on the window again, but there's no hair there to cushion it against the cold rattle of the glass, so Bo nudges until the two of them are leaning on each other.

He figures he might as well enjoy this peaceful moment. Luke needs a soft, warm bed and some healthy food. And as soon as he gets those two things, he'll get around to remembering the important things in life. Like the fact that his brat of a younger cousin went and demolished his beloved car.

* * *

The days are good, starting with the skim of frost that clings to the windows of the old farmhouse and the smoky puff of breath that escapes his lungs. Brown, in the dead grass and litter of leaves strewn across the ground, in the barren branches of the old oaks and the half-rusted wagon that's stood next to the kitchen porch for as long as he's been alive. The colors of nature's winter sleep and if he's never appreciated them before now, it's been an oversight on his part. Besides, the muted tones are offset by the brightly tinted paper on the presents in the living room, under the tree he and Bo dragged back from the woods on the far side of the fields that once belonged to old man Harper but have since gone to seed.

Before the sun manages to do any more than put pink highlights onto the edges of the clouds, there are chores. The livestock takes to him like he never left them behind. Their eyes don't bug out at the sight of his short hair, their noses don't wrinkle against whatever smell has followed him back from the jungle. The chickens still peck and Maudine regards him with exactly the same amount of suspicion that she ever did. The dogs tangle together at his feet, whining for attention and licking his hands as thanks for the way he strokes their fur.

Bo, on the other hand, is as skittish and jumpy as a horse under its first saddle. Or maybe a teenager that has wrecked his older cousin's favorite car and is waiting for that famous Luke Duke temper to reveal itself. And he has to admit, he's got a history of making the boy miserable over lesser offenses. But when it comes right down to it, his driver's license is nothing more than a rotted clump of lint in what is left of his wallet, and try though he might, Luke can't muster any sadness about the demise of his car or the piece of paper that allows him to drive it. Not right now when he's home, he's alive, it's a fresh new day, nearly Christmas and all of his close kin are within reasonable hugging distance.

But his cousin wouldn't believe that even if he tried to explain, so Luke leaves off petting the dogs and hurdles the waist-high gate to where the goats get penned through the coldest part of the winter. It's that section of the barn that has always seemed fetid to him before, but after a year in Vietnam simply smells of farming and home. The sudden invasion startles animal and human alike, as Bonnie Mae jumps away from where she was placidly permitting herself to be milked, and Bo's eyebrows come angrily down, his mouth open to verbalize some sort of protest. Doesn't get time; Luke's already shoved him off the stool, onto his knees in the filthy straw, and caught him from behind in a half-nelson before he can properly complain.

"Bo," he huffs in his cousin's ear. Sure, Luke has already won this wrestling match before it could even officially get started, but his cousin has grown since the last time they did this. It takes some work to pin the boy these days. "I ain't mad at you about the car."

"No?" Bo grouses back at him in the middle of a struggle to free himself. Luke takes an elbow in the gut which doesn't feel too good, but he maintains his grip on the boy. "Then what's this about?" It's a good thing Luke had the element of surprise in his favor. There's a heck of a lot more muscle on his cousin's frame than there used to be.

"It's about," he answers, dropping from a crouch to grind his own knees into the straw. Gives him just enough leverage to snake his other arm up Bo's chest and wrap it around the back of his neck. Full nelson. "Convincing you of that."

"Luke!" The protest, and Bo doesn't even have to tell him that the position is painful, he already knows. He's been pinned exactly this way a few times himself. He loosens his grip as much as he can while maintaining the upper hand; it's not his fault that there's not a lot of room for maneuverability there. No one told Bo to go growing up while he was gone.

"What's it gonna take, Bo? You reckon I need to beat the tar out of you so you can feel better about it?"

"As if you could," comes grunting out of the boy's mouth, foolish bravery.

"I could mash your face in the dirt," he offers as an alternative. Not a very appealing one considering that this particular patch of dirt is just about the nastiest that the farm has to offer. He can't say it's particularly pleasant that it's getting ground in to the cloth of their jeans right now, but then again, he's been dirtier than this. "If it would help."

"No thanks," Bo pants back at him, not quite giggling.

"Well, I got to do something. Seems like you ain't never gonna forgive yourself if I don't." Just for good measure, he shoves Bo's face that much closer to the straw below it.

"Yes I will—Luke!" Nervous laughter, like Bo's not sure whether he's being teased or not.

"Nah, can't go pushing your face in the dirt," he decides. "You got school today, got to look pretty. Wouldn't want none of them girls there to see you with a smudged-up face."

Proud little giggles escape from the body underneath his. "I always look pretty, Luke."

"Yeah?" he answers back, tightening his left arm again. He hears a grunt of complaint under him, but it's premature. After all, it's only so he can let go with his right hand, freeing it up to go in search of the milk bucket that was sitting right next to the stool when this wrestling match broke out. "You think so?" Ah, there it is – his fingers close around the rim and drag it closer. "Still," he announces, fighting the way Bo bucks against his hold. One more of those and the boy might actually get free. "I reckon you'll never believe I ain't mad unless I do something. So—" Quick movement, he grabs the bucket in his right arm, lets go of Bo with the left. Uses both hands to tip the contents of the bucket over his cousin's blonde head. Wasn't but a quarter full, but that's still plenty of warm milk to go around, drenching Bo's hair with enough left over to spill down his back and soak into Luke's shirt where their bodies are still pressed together.

"Luke!" He gets shoved at then, feels pretty serious. Gets pushed again, and Bo's trying to get those long legs under himself, turning, mopping his hair back from his eyes, but there are still rivulets of white dripping down his face. "Dang it!"

Takes only a second for them both to find their feet, for Bo to come after him, red faced, index finger jutting at him all the way.

"Luke," Bo snaps again, eyes scoping around the small confines in which they are trapped, probably looking for some means by which to exact an equal revenge. Finds nothing there but the goats themselves, undoubtedly laughing in their little goat brains at the pair of two-legged idiots stumbling around their pen. Luke's back finds the wood of a solid wall, Bo keeps advancing until fingertip meets breastbone. "Dang it! What did you do that for?"

Hands up in surrender: "You wrecked my car," he defends.

"Yeah, but," is Bo trying to stay mad, attempting with every fiber in his being to maintain the moral high ground.

"Besides," Luke points out. "Milk's good for the skin. It'll make you look pretty." A pat to Bo's cheek to reinforce the notion, and then the boy shakes his head like a wet dog, sending milk splattering in a three-foot radius.

The laughter of two stupid men fills the barn as Luke coaxes Bonnie-Mae back out of the corner. They're going to have to do a decent job of filling the pail again or, along with getting hollered at by Daisy for the awful state of their clothes, they'll be on the receiving end of an endless Jesse Duke lecture about the foolishness of wasting perfectly good milk.


	23. Part Three, Chapter Twenty-two

**Chapter Twenty-Two**

_January 1973_

Missing Luke has been a song his heart sang without thought, a repetitive refrain that never varied in pitch or rhythm. Like when he was first learning the guitar and the only thing he could play was _Polly Wolly Doodle All the Day _over and over again until Daisy threatened to smash the instrument over his head. It's not like he even wanted to sing the same song in an endless loop – either as a kid or over the past year and a half – and if he'd thought it would do any good, he'd have smacked himself over the head to get the dang thing out. But it was as ingrained in him as the progression of day into night and back again; if Luke wasn't near him, he was missed. No point in imagining otherwise.

Now he finds he has forgotten the melody of having Luke home with him. The lyrics tangle on his tongue.

"I just don't want to," he insists, tolerating a squinted-down, incredulous glare from those crazily intense blue eyes.

It is not, by any twist of his thoughts, that he doesn't want Luke right here. It's good to prove his strength and speed against his cousin's Marine-honed but still underweight frame during morning chores, and there's no explaining how much he has missed the elbow wars that have resumed at the kitchen table. There's something downright peaceful about watching his cousin's eyes close in unspoken pleasure upon tasting his morning coffee or evening meal, and watching that ghost of a smile chase across is face as his vision traces the sunset over the mountain peaks to their west. He can even halfway appreciate the rough hand on his shoulder before dawn, the quasi-military bark rousing him for chores, although he does not sleep nearly as deeply as Luke thinks he does.

Christmas was darn nearly perfect, falling on his cousin's fifth full day at home. Rushing around to make the holiday (which up until their missing kin came home, the Duke clan had been nearly sticking their heads into the red clay mud to ignore) special. Barely back on the farm long enough for Luke to dig out some jeans and a plain blue shirt, then cover that over with his faded and fraying denim jacket, and the two of them had set off in search of a suitable fir tree to cut down and cram into the corner of the living room. The evening had been spent decorating it and singing, and by nine at night the whole bunch of them had been pathetically tired – from cleaning the house, from fussing about the traffic on their way into Atlanta, from worrying over what it would mean to bring Luke home (and the Lord above only knew all the reasons that Luke was exhausted) – and had stumbled off toward their own beds. Barely enough time to change into sleep clothes and mumble good night to each other before the whole house was solidly asleep.

And the two days that followed, though the temporary reprieve that had allowed him to go to Atlanta to pick up Luke was over and he had to go back to school, were fine, fine days. His oldest cousin brought the family vehicle to pick him up so he didn't have to walk or take the bus at the end of the school day, and they swung into town to find Daisy, her arms loaded with mysterious packages. Bean and potato meals got stretched out to feed four instead of three, and the competitive spirit between two Duke boys made evening chores pass in double time. In fact, all of life had picked up a new, faster pace since Luke came home, and almost before he could find time to wrap the useless little trinkets that he had gotten his family as gifts, it was Christmas.

Luke was almost cute about it all, smile playing at his lips, eyes wide and searching each of their faces as they unwrapped the things he'd brought back from his travels. A dress for Daisy, coming down over her knees and far longer than anything she'd worn since she got out of school, not to mention how it smelled just as ripe as everything else that had come out of Luke's duffel bag. But the girl had cooed over it, held it up to herself briefly before putting it on a hanger and hooking it – conspicuously – on a nail that was nowhere near her closet. And Bo would bet the two dollars that were all that he had left in his wallet that she would wash it, more than once, before ever wearing it. To church, because it was too demure for any other place she might go.

Jesse wound up with some sort of cooking apparatus – Luke told them all what it was called, but the word wasn't English and Bo couldn't remember it even after Luke said it twice – that looked like a tiny grill. Seemed like the family would be safe from whatever sort of concoction might be cooked on it until the warm days of summer made outdoor barbecues a reasonable prospect.

Bo had been practicing his smile all through watching Jesse and Daisy's happy little noises at their gifts. And secretly praying that whatever odd and quite possibly useless thing that Luke had dragged halfway around to world to give him wouldn't be too hard to pretend to love. Got himself surprised when his older cousin excused himself for a minute to step outside – and since they hadn't used the outhouse in years, it hadn't made any sense – then came back in with something wiggling in his arms. Blonde, long haired, and if it hadn't had four legs, Bo might have said that Luke was giving him a mini version of himself. With a pink, lapping tongue that lacked discretion or even good sense, licking faces, hands, and, when Luke handed it over to him, even the buttons on his shirt.

"Aw, he's cute," Daisy had cooed, offering her own cheek for a sloppy dog-kiss.

"She," Luke had clarified. "For breeding," he'd explained, eyes locking onto Bo's. Flicker of hesitation there, the kind of look made Bo writhe with discomfort. "She's a spaniel, so she's got to have more smarts than the boys out there, ought to be good for the lineage. And she's pretty so maybe some of her pups will even sell, come fair time. Got her from the McDougals up the lane." All that explaining was even worse than the uncertainty on Luke's face – so wrong for his confident older cousin. So he shifted his hold on the pup in his arms to be one-handed, and grabbed his cousin in a quick hug.

"Thanks, Luke," he whispered, and then it had to be over, because the dog that was caught between them squirmed and yelped at the threat of being crushed.

"Let me see the little bugger," Jesse had said, had dutifully called her pretty and patted her on the head, suggested the name Goldie for her, and then reminded them all that on this here farm the dogs stayed in the barn, not the house. And that his two lazy nephews had better build her a separate pen, and soon, before she got old enough to come into season.

The rest of the gifts under the tree – simple trinkets of no real value – had been quickly unwrapped and even more quickly forgotten. There was a healthy meal to be had, then church, and by the end of the day, they'd all once again fallen into bed, seemingly exhausted.

But Luke hadn't stayed between his sheets for the whole night. Somewhere in the hours that Bo reckoned no one with any sanity – other than a moonshiner making a very late delivery – ought to be awake, he heard Luke's bedclothes rustle, and then just as he was drifting back to unawareness, there'd been the quiet click of their bedroom door. He didn't have to be fully awake to realize that he was the only one left in their room.

Insomnia, he guessed, and just because Luke was having himself a bout of it didn't mean they both had to, so he let himself forget all about it. Until it happened the next night, and the one after that. Before long Bo reckoned Luke was just making a show of going to bed, like maybe he could fool them all into thinking he was really going to sleep this time. But that notion fell apart when the older boy started, with Jesse's tacit approval, to nap on the couch in the daytime. Snoring there like he usually did in bed, but it was two o'clock in the afternoon and no one under the age of about seventy ought to be sleeping then, even if they had been up all night. It was just – wrong.

Yet their uncle said to leave him be, so they did, and eventually the New Year passed and school started up again. Whatever sleep Luke got seemed to happen when Bo was in class, so he tried not to think too much about it.

Until, that was, he started to consider that maybe his cousin wasn't getting any sleep at all anymore. Still skinny as a scarecrow and now his eye-sockets were discolored like day-after-a-brawl bruises, but what was worse, he was getting surly.

"What do you mean, you just don't want to?" Culminating in today's little family discussion.

"Just what I said, Luke, I don't want to." Play basketball, that is. Not on an organized team at school anyway. It's not, despite his height that makes everyone automatically assume otherwise, his favorite game. "I don't see where it should matter to you, anyways."

"Why it should matter to me?" Incredulous, head-shakingly impatient, that's the look on his twisted up face. "Are you crazy?"

"Now-now-now Luke," is Jesse finally interrupting to put his two cents in. Seems to Bo's memory that the two of them have never been allowed to argue this long in the past without their guardian butting in. "I reckon it's up to Bo to decide whether he wants to be on the team or not. He's the one that would have to play." Not to mention practice, every day after school for the entire twelve-week season. And now that Luke's back, he expects to have better things to do with his afternoons. At least that was what he thought before his cousin started to sneer at him over the decision.

"But Uncle Jesse," the bossy one disputes. "He ought—"

"Listen to me, Luke. It ain't up to you to decide what Bo ought to do. He's already told you—why, it must be five times already—that he ain't interested. So you just leave him be."

"Fine," his charming cousin snaps, then turns on his heel to leave the kitchen in a dramatic, door slamming exit. Out into the winter chill without his coat, but Luke's been stubborn about _wanting_ to be cold. Not a one of them has been able to convince him that the very notion is foolish.

"Uncle Jesse," Bo complains, though it is not, any of it, the old man's fault. It seems perfectly reasonable to Bo that the choice of what sports he wants to play ought to be up to him. But he has never much been a fan of being out of sorts with Luke.

"Just leave him be for a bit," gets answered back to him, a meaty hand coming to rest warmly on his shoulder. "He'll come around."

Yeah. The old man sounds as convinced of that as he is that the moon is made of cheese and thunderheads are nothing more than whipped cream-covered chocolate sundaes.

* * *

He's not upset about the loss of the Falcon. It was, for the most part, a boy's car. A plaything, a toy too fast for its own good, as Bo proved. But he reckons that it would do the whole family a bit of good if he found himself something worth driving, something reliable and practical that will take some of the burden off of the old creaking and groaning pickup.

"Come on, Bo!" he calls into the open barn where his cousin is playing with the spaniel, which they named Brown Sugar. From the yips in there, the poor thing's most likely being teased with a ball or a bone, but it's all right. Bo can never seem to let her get too frustrated before he overcompensates with treats and belly rubs. Luke's glad the dog is so wholly loved, he really is. He just figures that she's also a fine excuse for the younger boy to keep his distance.

He can't say as he entirely blames the kid. Luke was never overly eager to go spending his time with Sergeants Lewis or Kauffman, either, though in retrospect he can recognize the value of the lessons those men taught him. And if he's been riding his cousin a bit since he's been home, well, it's just like putting him through a really gentle version of boot camp. Though the teenager doesn't necessarily appreciate it now, a little structure will make Bo sharper and stronger in the end, and less apt to have to go making sad little confessions about how he didn't properly mind his elders so he found himself in trouble.

"Get a move on!" he hollers again.

"Yeah, yeah," comes back at him from the shadows. It's not a proper military response, wouldn't even pass the Jesse Duke test of respect, but that's just fine. He's not even slightly interested in seeing the boy stand in a line of others like him, at full attention and screaming "sir, yes sir," before hitting the dirt for squat thrusts. What he's been doing with Bo is not so much recruiting him for the armed forces as just helping the kid rebuild his lost self-esteem. At least that's his goal.

"Here," he says, tossing the keys underhand across the distance between them, "you drive." Which is also part of his plan – to show that Luke trusts the boy behind the wheel.

It would all work out a lot better, he reckons, if Jesse wouldn't go interfering like he does. The best thing for Bo, even if he didn't want to do it, would have been to spend the rest of the winter playing basketball and being part of something bigger than himself. Teamwork and loyalty to the other guys, the sort of thing that would make the lazy boy push himself to be faster and more powerful, and when the season was over, he would have been sporting that proud, ear-to-ear grin. If Jesse hadn't stepped in and told him he didn't have to play if he didn't want to.

"Where are we going?" Bo asks as the engine of the pickup chokes itself to life, coughing like an old geezer with a lifelong two-pack-a-day habit. Which might be an accurate statement, considering the age of the truck and the fumes that come puffing out of its tailpipe.

"The garage," he decides, though his original plan would have taken them away from town to the junkyard out on Possum Crossing. But they might as well be efficient about this thing; if there's anyone who knows whether there's something salvageable in that junkyard, it's Cooter. Who is also a fine mechanic and can give this here ailing pickup a good going over.

Besides, he can't go avoiding town; it's the heart of the county, even if he might always have preferred the wide fields and steep hills, the climbing kudzu and choking dust of the farmland that surrounds it. He's got no real good reason, when it comes right down to it, for the fact that he hasn't yet spent any time in the square or visited the stores and restaurants that ring the green. The holidays were a fine excuse for never going anywhere more public than the church, where he got properly welcomed back to the county, patted on the back, wished well, smiled at by shy girls and winked at by brazen ones, then left to himself. Now that life around them has resumed its normal moseying pace, he reckons it's about time he got back into the thick of its lazy routine.

Doesn't mean his stomach doesn't twist a little as the pickup coasts past the old elms that line the major thoroughfare, while he questions whether Hazzard really is all that different from the larger cities where veterans are not exactly adored.

But the eternal cheer of the town fool, Cooter Davenport, who wears his heart, in equal measure with grease, on his torn sleeve, forces him to laugh at his own concerns. From that first silly giggle that the man lets loose upon seeing two Duke heads bobbing in the cab of the old pickup to the heavy slap that crashes into his shoulder, Luke knows this is a man who would never think twice about accepting him just as he is. If only because Cooter is not in the habit of thinking once, much less twice.

"I heard you was back," their friend grins, hand coming up to whip the baseball cap off Luke's head, "Very nice," is his commentary on Luke's hair, but it's no different than it was when he was on leave a year ago.

"Cooter," Bo defends him, but Luke waves him off. His hair cannot grow fast enough to suit either of them.

"It'll grow back," he points out. "Come summer it'll be just as pretty as ever. Ain't no amount of time gonna fix your ugly mug."

That earns him another fool's giggle, and an arm around his neck dragging him toward the dark interior of the garage, where the sun never reaches on winter days. Cold and reeking of exhaust and—"Well just look what the recruiter dragged in,"—apparently the Duke boys aren't the only ones who saw fit to come down here this afternoon.

"Dobro Doolan," Bo greets with a comfortable familiarity that he's never quite had with the guy before. Usually the younger Duke cousin lets Luke take the lead when it comes to their older friends. "And if it ain't good old Brody." The second man slings an arm around Bo's shoulders warmly, like they're old friends. And sure, they are, but they've never been exactly close.

"Looking good," Brody assures Bo, patting him on the cheek.

"So what brings a couple of farm boys to the big town?" Cooter asks with that silly gap-toothed smile that has never wavered since the moment he saw them. "We ain't got no pigs for sale here." What a funny guy.

"Good thing we ain't pig farmers then," Bo says, slipping out from under Brody's arm to swat the mechanic on the belly. Interesting how easily Bo relates to the whole bunch of them.

"Wheels," Luke explains, as he finds himself a seat on the heavily rusted bumper of the wrecker that's haphazardly parked across the concrete floor. "And it looks like you ain't too busy to help us out. Me and Bo need to pull something out of the junkyard that we can get running pretty quick. Any ideas?"

The conversation stumbles and stutters over suggestions of coupes and sedans, banged up muscle cars and motorcycles, before Luke is able to get it back on course.

"A pickup," he insists. "Something that can take on some of the load around the farm, plus get Bo to school and home."

"You're actually going to let him drive it?" That's Dobro, with a dose of smart-ass incredulity. "After what he done to your car?"

"What I done," Bo jumps in. This, at least is familiar. "It only happened because you wasn't keeping to your half of the road." Dobro's loud mouth and Bo's automatic retorts.

So Luke props an arm across Bo's shoulders – has to reach up to do it, he might never get used to that – and says, "I reckon we'll just register it in Bo's name. It's about time he owned some wheels."

"Well boys, I might just know of something. See, there's this ugly old black pickup out there that ain't hardly gonna take no work at all. It ain't never gonna go real fast or nothing, but it'll get by."

"Well, let's go get it." No point in wasting time sitting here jawing about it when they could be working on it.

"Luke," Bo complains. "We already got a pickup. Why don't we go look at what else is out there first?"

But his mind's made up, and it is, after all, his military savings that are going to pay for it. There's no point in using even one cent of that money for a single thing that's not going to benefit the family or the farm; helping his kin might be the only good thing that comes of his time in the service.

"Soon as I get off work, buddyroes," Cooter says, as though standing around and yakking with friends counts as some sort of job or something. "We'll go and y'all can fight over what to get when we get there."

* * *

There is, as far as he knows, no bone of contention between himself and Luke. They are not at odds; they do not fight, argue or even so much as bicker. Of course, in order to do any of those things they'd have to talk, but they don't do a ton of that, either.

Luke has always been a miser with words, doling out only as many as he needs to get his point across. And, as far as Bo can tell, right now Luke has no point he wishes to make.

"Ain't you got homework?" Except maybe that one. Which is one point disguised as another, really. What pretends to be concern over Bo's academic obligations is really just his cousin turning him down, yet again.

All right, so turning eighteen didn't work out precisely like Bo thought it would. He didn't wake up to a new world on the morning of his birthday, one in which he was suddenly perceived to be smarter, more mature, better able to make good, logical decisions. He didn't strike out on his own like he might have thought he should, and his idea of dropping out of school hadn't impressed anyone any more than it had when he was sixteen.

But there is one thing that being eighteen entitles him to, and that is a night out with his cousin at the Boar's Nest, clinking together two perfectly legal mugs of beer.

Except there's always some reason or other that they can't, or more accurately, that Luke won't.

And that's really a shame, because the way he sees it, his cousin needs to be loosened up and tired out. There's less and less evidence that he's is getting any sleep to speak of – he can't be found in his own bed anytime past midnight (though sometimes Bo thinks he probably comes back around four or so and catches a little sleep before dawn) and he's not often found napping on the couch anymore, either.

So maybe Luke can't be blamed for his nearly immobile tongue; maybe it's just too tired to be interested in saying anything. But Bo can't quite buy that notion, not when he reckons he might have borne witness to the moment that Luke tied his own tongue up so it wouldn't do any talking. The details hadn't made sense to him, but it had taken place on that day when they'd bought the black pickup that now hauls them from here to there, that is when it's not parked under the old oak in the farmyard. Five guys had sat around in the garage, waiting for Cooter to declare that the sun had moved far enough to the west that he could call it quitting time. There had been sodas and those jelly doughnuts that Cooter favored so much, and when they'd just about made themselves sick on sugar, there was nothing left to do but trade tall tales.

Somehow or other big fish stories turned into discussions of gators and snakes, and without any forethought, Luke started talking about the sort of crawling critters that could be found in the jungles of Vietnam. A sort of morbid curiosity had them all fascinated to hear about cobras and pit vipers, but when the story rambled over to being tales of hacking through vines and sneaking past tripwires to figure out where the enemy was and what they might be up to, well, by that time only Bo and Cooter were still listening. Dobro all but said his mother was calling him and made quick work of getting out of the garage, and then Brody had suddenly realized that he had other places to be. No matter, Bo had figured. If the other guys weren't interested in what Luke had to say, it was just as well that the stories were kept amongst kin and close friends anyway.

But Luke's tongue had stopped working right about then, and maybe by now it's gotten rusty. Whatever, it keeps largely still, only loosening long enough to give abrupt orders. Or suggest that Bo has better things to be doing than going out with his cousin for a drink.

Bo has one last ace up his sleeve, though.

"All right, we'll stay in tonight. But tomorrow's a delivery night; come with me on a run?"

Luke doesn't say anything at all, but he does shrug in loose agreement. Some wild driving and outrunning the law will no doubt bring the fun side of his cousin back.

* * *

"You-you-you want your sleeping bag?" As far as he knows, his uncle Jesse has never been a stutterer. And yet so many of his sentences seem hesitant to get started these days.

"I ain't sleeping out here," Luke answers him back without turning around. The porch is not exactly warm at midnight, but it usually provides a pretty good vantage point. At least for the first hour or so, when all he's really watching is the stars. When he gets to feeling like he'd rather have a three-hundred-sixty-degree view of his surroundings, which usually coincides with a certain stiffness in his legs, he finds another perch, like the low branches of the old oak, the bed of one of the pickups, the fence at the front of the property. Sometimes he patrols the perimeter – of the farmyard, of the Duke property, of the few parcels of land that front on Old Mill Road.

"Boy," Jesse says to him, punctuated by the screen door screeching on its hinges like the call of some exotic bird of prey. So much for keeping the oldster out of the elements; he'd somehow thought that not making eye contact would make the man turn around and head back to bed. "You ain't sleeping much of anywhere." Yeah, he knows that.

"Don't need as much sleep as I used to, I suppose." Though his eyes would beg to differ. There's an ongoing sort of itch to close them, rub at them, and let them rest. His brain gets tired too, sort of fuzzy and unfocused, and his body never complains when he lies down. Every time he takes to his bed, he thinks that he's tired enough, finally, to sleep through the night. He'll lie there in the dark counting sheep, counting the days that he's been home, counting Bo's peaceful breaths. Sometimes, it seems, he even drifts toward blissful sleep, but eventually he has to admit to himself that it's all a cruel illusion. Somewhere after that little dose of honesty, he'll feel a twinge in his back or a cramp in his legs, and he reckons there's no cure for it but to move. To roll over, and eventually to rise, to pace, to slip out the door and find himself here.

"A man needs to sleep, Luke." A blanket gets dropped next to him. "Even if it's on the porch or in the barn or in a tent off in the woods. A man needs sleep almost as much as he needs food. And family."

There is, not surprisingly, a thinly veiled subtext in there. About how he would do well to spend more time with his kin, most likely, how he needs to take Bo up on offers to go out carousing, or ought to sit close and watch Daisy mend their clothes instead of spending so much of his time out here. It's not a new song, nor is it one that Luke hasn't tried to hum to himself. It's just that, somehow or other, he's grown not to much care for having a roof over his head. What with how it keeps him from communing with the stars.

"You know," the old man goes on, grunting as he helps himself to sitting on the floorboards to Luke's right, though he certainly hasn't been invited to join him. And, more than that, hasn't been asked to wrap the blanket around Luke's shoulders like he's a stubborn little boy that refuses to abide by bedtime rules. "That there ain't nothing you can't talk to me about, boy, don't you?"

Can't – such an interesting word. He's fully aware that he has his uncle's permission to bring up any subject he would like to. As to whether that means he really can—

"Ain't got much of nothing to say, Uncle Jesse."

"Your Aunt Lavinia used to get insomnia sometimes," is some sort of a tidy little subject change on the old man's part. Typical – it's the sort of tack he'd take in talking to Sheriff Coltrane or old Harvey Essex. Redirect the attention of fools, and they won't notice the facts that are right there under their nose. If his brain wasn't so sluggish, Luke might have used the same ploy himself. "She'd go out on the couch and read until dawn, then get you kids up and moving. Sometimes she'd go months without a good night's sleep. She'd get to dragging something awful." Which contradicts all of Luke's memories of an energetic woman who was on the move from dawn to dusk. Heck, it was her that always found time to play a game of catch with him when all her work was done; she's also the one who taught him how to hit a curveball. "But then harvest would come, or planting time, and by the end of them hard-working days, she'd fall into bed and not stir until the sun did. I reckon some hard work might do you good, boy. Until planting comes, why don't you join me at the still? Since you ain't sleeping anyway."

"You ain't been cooking since I got back." Luke ought to know, being the one who stays up through the night. "And there's still plenty of liquor up at the site." He ought to know that as well; he and Bo were up there just a few nights ago, picking some up for delivery. His young cousin kept trying to make the run exciting, but it just wasn't. Not when Bo is capable of outdriving each and every one of Hazzard's lawmen, left handed and blindfolded.

"All the more reason I need to start up again," Jesse answers back in that high pitched tone that brooks no sassing. "Are you going to help me or not?"

"I reckon." He might as well be doing something useful. Keeping watch over the farm has proven an unnecessary task. About the only enemy slinking through the dark here might be a coyote, and he hasn't even seen one of those.

"Good boy. And Luke, if you're going to be up all night anyways, make yourself a pot of coffee. The warmth will do you good. You sound like you're coming down with a cold."

"Ain't sick," he says, and if his words come out kind of scratchy, it is not germs that are causing it. He can't say what makes his voice turn to gravel, and he doesn't get asked. His shoulder simply gets patted as the old man stands and turns back toward the warmth of the kitchen. There is a moment – only one and it doesn't last long enough to count for anything – when he wants to call his uncle back to him, to ask him to stay and keep him company for awhile. But he doesn't, he just keeps on watching the stars glow in the sky as the door behind him screeches open then bangs shut.


	24. Part Three, Chapter Twenty-three

**Chapter Twenty-Three**

_February 1973_

Thinking is for people like Luke; all the important things Bo needs to know come to him without effort. Like he knows that Rosco Coltrane plus forward momentum equals a more than fifty-fifty chance of a wrecked cruiser, and he doesn't need a math class to teach him that any more than he needs a biology teacher to tell him that girls are warm and soft and fun to kiss.

And one more thing he knows – though men with more active brains than his, a shining example being his own kin, can't seem to see it – is that what's going on with Luke is just… it's not smart. Oh, he has to admit there's a certain logic to it, and his cousin and uncle can explain it all quite neatly. About how, although Luke and Jesse started out to do it as a team, it really only takes one man to stay up all night and work the still. And that while the body of the man who raised them has grown older and more tired, Luke's is in the peak of its youthful strength. Besides, Jesse is actually able to sleep at night, and since Luke claims that he can't, it seems pretty obvious which of them should be doing the cooking. Out there in the woods, alone.

Bo is not a deep thinker, but Luke is. Given the time and space, Luke will think a thing backward and forward, up, down and sideways, around in circles and back again. And then the conclusion that he comes to will be thought through and mulled over before it gets dissected and its component parts studied. And all along, his cousin will be concentrating on flaws – whether those flaws are embedded in the original idea or in his own logic. Luke can think a thing to death.

And what good does any of it do?

Bo may not think a lot, but he knows that Luke isolating himself is not a good thing.

"What are you doing?" And that's one of the results, right there, of Luke's deep thinking. A sour face that accuses Bo of idiocy before he even knows what he's up to.

"Putting on long johns." All right, so it might just be idiocy that Bo is planning, but there's no good reason for Luke to go thinking all the worst things about it ahead of time.

"I can see that. How come?"

"Because it's cold outside." See, and with all that thinking, Luke can't come up with the simplest answers to his own questions.

"I know that, Bo."

"Well then," _why did you ask?_ he wants to say. But being obtuse isn't getting him anywhere. It's just giving Luke more to think about, to mull over long enough to declare it stupid with that condescending tone he uses. The one that makes Bo snappish, makes him answer back. "I reckon I like all my body parts exactly where they are. I don't want none of them frozen off." His jeans take the brunt of his frustrations, getting roughly pulled up to cover his long underwear.

"Ain't no reason—"

"Yeah, Luke, there is. Because I ain't got no homework, I ain't got no deliveries to make, I ain't got school tomorrow, and I ain't got nothing more pressing to do. So I am going up to the still to work with you."

And just look at how that little outburst sets his cousin's thinking back a few steps. Boy's face is the very definition of exasperated, but he doesn't have any deep or intelligent reasons why his kid cousin can't join him in the woods for one night.

"Let's get going," he snaps, before those wheels in Luke's brain get engaged again. Grabs the sweatshirt from where he laid it out on his bed and pulls it over his head, then starts marching toward the kitchen where his winter jacket and boots can be found.

"All right," he hears from behind him, and he doesn't have to look to know that there's a right eyebrow getting cocked up at his back as Luke follows him, _thinking_ some more.

_Be patient_. Jesse's advice from the outset, and it hasn't changed. _Give him time._

Time, he reckons, is part of the problem. Too much time to himself, despite any protestations to the contrary, is not good for Luke Duke. But patience, yeah, Bo could give his cousin a bit more of that.

So he turns around and grins, reaches out a hand to clap Luke on the shoulder, then tightens his grip there to balance himself as he stands at the front door, pulling his boots on.

"Besides," he says. "Now you got a whole night to tell me about all them girls you got with when you was in the Marines."

"Bo," Jesse warns from where he's standing in his robe over the sink, pouring a pot of coffee into a thermos for his two boys to take up to the still with them tonight.

"What?" he asks back, all innocence and charm. "Everyone knows that girls love a man in uniform, right Luke?"

Tight little smirk from the man on his left and then, "Women, cuz. Women love a man in uniform. Girls like little blonde boys."

Bo smirks back at him, gets a pulled face of false pity in response.

"Boys," Jesse warns again. There's a whole lecture getting formulated over there by the sink, the kind that reminds them what sort of talk is fitting in this house, and what sort ought to take place in dark spaces where it will never be overheard by the fairer sex, but it's too late. Daisy's already there in the archway between the kitchen and living room, giggling into her hand. "Just," their uncle goes on, putting the coffee pot down and taking two heavy steps to hand off the thermos to Luke. "Hush now, and be careful up there. Look out for—" hesitation there, as his eyes move from where they've been meeting Luke's to look over at Bo then back again. "Each other," he settles for.

And Bo knows, without thinking of course, that what his uncle was initially going to do was tell his older cousin to take care of him. It's just a lifetime habit, and if he'd like to remind all of them that he's eighteen, he doesn't bother right now. Because no matter what his uncle or cousins think, tonight is about him looking after Luke.

They ditch their black pickup in the frost-laden shrubs at the bottom of Round Hill. He grabs the shotgun off the rack in the cab while Luke sets a breakneck pace through the moonlit forest, leaving him to lag several steps behind as they climb toward the clearing at the top. About halfway there, Luke stops, cocks his head slightly left, then turns back in Bo's direction with a raised right arm: stop. Around the thumping of his heart, Bo cranes his own neck, trying to catch the sound of leaves rustling or twigs breaking. Neither happens, but after a handful of nervous seconds he watches as a doe strolls across the gap between the two Dukes, her own ears high and twitching. Kind of late for her to be out and about; poor thing must be half-starved. Not worth shooting even if this was a hunt, so he just shrugs and starts moving again at the same time Luke does. A little further ahead his cousin is silently pointing out the trip wires to him, and then making sure that he crosses them without stumbling.

They set to silent work: building the fire, assessing the fermentation of the mash, checking the whole works for corrosion. Hard, but necessary, to do by the dim beam of a flashlight. Besides, everything is in fine condition, because Luke was the last one up here and he's nothing if not thorough and tidy after his stint in the Marines. Man even folds his undershorts into perfectly creased squares.

A watched kettle never boils—that's one of those old sayings that he'd like to believe, but once they get cooking someone's got to stir the mash so it won't stick to the kettle, and since Luke's gone off to sit on the high boulder that they sometimes use for a lookout, that's him.

However, one of those things he knows, without having to think about it, is that a silent cousin left to himself will ruminate. So once everything's boiling safely along in the pot, he seals the copper lid on top, realigns the worm, and heads over to join his cousin. Leans right up close and slings an arm around Luke's neck.

Gets firmly shoved off – not hard, he keeps his feet without effort – but deliberately.

"Bo," comes out as a hiss. "Don't – you got to keep your distance. You can't be standing this close to me when we're out here in the woods and we don't know what all the dangers are. Just—go back and mind the still."

Patience. That's what Jesse recommends and Bo tries to live up to the suggestion. It's not easy, he wants to retaliate, wants to shove back at Luke or maybe grab him by the shoulders and tell him not to act like a crazed old moonshiner.

But he doesn't, he marches back to the still, emotions smoldering all the way. "Fine," he mutters, and reckons that old moody there can just keep on spending his nights up here alone.

* * *

He's an idiot, he's a jerk. He might, if anyone was brave enough to ask him, cop to those two things. What he has no explanation for is the way he's sitting here on the back porch, fiddling with the dog tag around his neck like he's nothing more than a love-struck girl toying with a necklace given to her by her first boyfriend. Feeling the tag pop itself over each of the balls on the chain as he pulls it along.

The short chain got lost long ago and is likely nothing more than a rust stain on a patch of moss between two ferns clinging to the side of a mountain somewhere in Vietnam. The tag that was once laced into his boot is in the drawer of the table between his bed and Bo's; the boots themselves hit the rubbish heap a day after he came home. "They smell," had been the general consensus of his family – not just about the boots, but about everything that came back with him from Vietnam.

But the longer chain has stayed around his neck, under his shirt most of the time. Until this afternoon, and his uncle has just caught him playing with it.

"They could call me back to active duty, you know," he says in response to the creak of boards behind him. Jesse's a smart man, keeping his distance, but the sideways light of winter casts the man's long shadow over him all the same.

"I know." Of course he does, it was the first thing Luke had blurted out during that phone call from LeJeune two short months ago. _I don't want you to get too excited because they can always call me back, but the Corps is putting me on inactive duty. I'm coming home._ "That why you're sitting out here with your chin down like you been up to no good and you're afraid to tell me what you done?"

A sigh. "No," he mumbles, and if his denial sounds more like a confession, well old Jesse's good enough not to say so.

"You figure that if you leave that tag around your neck it's gonna make it easier on you if they do call you back?"

Maybe. He just figures that it won't do him any good to go getting attached to being back here in Hazzard. Oh sure, a peace treaty got signed last month, and supposedly all the combat troops are being recalled out of Vietnam. But treaties get broken and new skirmishes break out every day. And the whole of southeast Asia is a lit stick of dynamite that's just waiting to blow all over again.

"Because those are just foolish thoughts." Good old Jesse, never afraid to call a spade a spade. Or to take those few steps across the porch to be closer to him. Any minute now the old man's going to grip his chin like he's nothing more than a little boy and start scolding him. For bringing Vietnam with him when he came home, for roughly shoving Bo away from him, for being a general jackass. "Luke, you're young yet, and the good Lord willing, you've got a lot of future ahead of you. And if a couple of years of that future get spent with the Marines, it's only a small part of your life."

Easy for the old man to say. Or maybe not; most of his years – good and bad – are in the past. But the Marines are not about to come a-calling for one Jesse Duke, and if they did, they'd never send him off to any war.

"You don't know what them couple of years would be like," he mumbles.

"And neither do you," Jesse reminds him. Big sigh, and the man sits himself down. Not touching him, but close. "I reckon that what you're trying to tell me is that I ain't got no idea what the last couple of years was like for you, Luke. And you're right." Two Duke men, sitting on the stairs, watching how the mountains on the horizon stand there, immovable. It's some beautiful country that they live in, and maybe Jesse knows that and maybe he doesn't. Luke can't swear that he ever properly appreciated it until he didn't have the opportunity look at it every day. "I don't. But I got to remind you, neither me nor your cousins can possibly know nothing that you don't go ahead and tell us. We stand ready to listen."

Sure they do. He figures he can warm them up with tales of the foul mouthed Staff Sergeants from boot camp who did everything in their power to make him forget he was a Duke. From there he can sidle into the part where he led Candy Dix to believe they could have a future together, only to leave her behind without even so much as a goodbye. After that will come beauty and glory of his time in Vietnam, where he let himself be saved by better men than him, only to go on living long enough to be an accessory to the deaths of others. And there'll be accounting for the fact that he nearly killed a man with weapons no more powerful than his own two fists in what was supposed to be a sporting competition. That little storytelling session ought to go just swimmingly, considering he'll be facing the whip and a good dose of lye soap in the mouth before he even gets through the first chapter.

"I can't make you tell me nothing you don't want to," Jesse concedes. "But I can hold onto that there dog tag for you." Meaty hand out in front of him, palm up and waiting. "I'll give it back if you need it. But in the meantime, if it ain't around your neck, you won't have to go thinking about it none, either."

He sighs, turns the tag upward to read it again. It's meant to convey, should anyone come upon his lifeless body, all the important facts about who he was. And when it comes right down to it, those letters stamped into that flat strip of metal constitute the same sort of cacophonous chaos that his life does right now. DUKE, L. K. is there toward the top, followed by USMC for his membership in the Corps, and somehow or other it always seems to him that he has to choose between being one of those things or the other. After that there's his blood type, but both Doc Petticord and Tri-County hospital already have records stating that much about him; then comes his gas-mask size, and he doesn't expect that there's even one gas mask in the whole of Hazzard County anyway; and finally his religion, which everyone in town already knows.

He slips the chain up and over his head, and drops the whole mess into the outstretched hand in front of him.

"I'll keep it safe for you, son," Jesse swears.

Quiet settles on them for a minute as they both go back to staring off at the hills to the west, which, like his head, are covered in brown stubble. Two months, maybe three for the highest elevations, and the peaks will be lush and green, wrapped in soft mist, as if winter never happened. By the time the first heat wave rolls around, his hair should be long enough to curl around his collar again, and outwardly he'll appear to be the same farm boy that he ever was.

"Luke," his uncle interrupts his thoughts. Waits for him to turn and look into those wise old eyes. "If you can't stand to look at your past and you ain't sure about the future, about all you got left is to embrace the present. While you're here, for as long as you're here – and it might just be that you stay permanent this time – you got to _live_ boy."

* * *

"The way I got it figured," he starts, and if he could trust his cousin to react well to it, he'd sling his arm around Luke's shoulders and look down at him through the filter of his eyelashes. But he's not willing to be thrown off and told to keep his distance, so he just says the words, "We both been single for too long."

Gets snorted at, gets told to speak for himself. But he's not fooled. Even if Luke had himself a steady girl in the service – and Bo doubts that he did – it's been a good two months since he could have seen her. And since he's been back in Hazzard, about the only girl that either of them has spent more time with than it takes to wink is Daisy.

He is currently, just like he has always done, wearing his cousin down. Working him around from a flat-out _no_ to a _not now_ to a _maybe_, and if he keeps on pushing, pretty soon he's likely to get a _don't say I never did nothing for you_.

Patience has its place he reckons, and that place is somewhere other than right here. It's Saturday evening, closing in quick on being full out night, and two Duke boys are sitting on their own kitchen porch. Some days it seems like the floorboards ought to have a groove worn in them that's about the same shape as Luke's backside, considering how much time his cousin spends out here. It makes it easy, at least, to find him. And to pin him down, because sometimes the boy seems loath to leave this little patch of their homestead.

Though that's exactly Bo's goal tonight – to get his cousin off the property all together and out to enjoy the nightlife that is their birthright.

"Seems to me," goes the gist of his next salvo, "that you still owe me a drink."

Cocked head, the look in those piercing blue eyes caught somewhere between suspicion and curiosity. He's got Luke's attention now. "For what?"

"My birthday." Well, actually Luke missed two of them, but only the one really matters. "Remember, I turned legal drinking age a few months back."

A snort, but then, unbelievably, a smile, genuine and warm, breaks out across Luke's face. Right hand comes up to muss blonde curls and, "So you did," Luke agrees. "And to think I knew you back when you ain't had no hair or teeth, and all you did all day was drool."

Maybe it's supposed to irk him and make him protest about how, no matter how young he was, he was always the better-looking Duke boy. But the sunshine cheer that's warming his heart cannot be dimmed, even by insinuations that he might once have been a slobbering brat. Because this affectionate guy right here – this is his pre-Marines cousin.

"Well, come on," Luke says to him, like going out to the Boar's Nest was his idea to begin with. "You gonna sit there all night or are you gonna change out of those ratty old jeans so we can go out?"

He lets himself be pulled to standing and dragged through the kitchen door. Winks at Jesse as he follows his cousin off to their bedroom to get ready. Finds himself engaged in the first Duke-boy closet war in years, as they wrestle their way into the tight quarters at the same time. He emerges victoriously first, jeans and bright red shirt in his hands, and just about gallops down the hall to beat his cousin to the bathroom. There's only so much hot water in the tank, and he plans to make full use of most of it. Besides, he's looking forward to reversing their roles, to making Luke take the second shift of making himself decent, so Bo can be the one who sits on the couch tapping his fingers, that what-took-you-so-long smirk playing across his lips. The one who can say—

"It took you that long of trying to make yourself look pretty, and that's all you managed?" Dang it all, that's supposed to be his line, not Luke's.

"Hell, you ain't even started," he retorts, tolerating lowered eyebrows from the old man sitting in the worn red chair reading his Bible as chastisement for cussing.

"Started and finished, just sitting around waiting for you," Luke insists.

And it's – he wants to be angry that the rules have changed, that they don't both have the urge to take showers so they can make their hair perfect, wants to announce that it's no fair. But he can't, because all he's lost is a silly little game. What Luke gave up—starting with the most obvious thing, his hair—is a whole way of life.

Which gives Bo an entirely different feeling, one that twists through his gut in waves of frustration and admiration, one that leaves him with nothing to do but shrug, smile, and say, "You ready to go?"

* * *

Such a proud peacock, strutting from table to table in steps too short of his long legs and greeting this person then that, most of them girls. Head tossing his once perfectly coifed hair out of his eyes, all the better to use them for flirting. Luke set his cousin free to scout out the options only minutes after they got here, and Bo's just about running himself ragged checking out one pretty little filly after another. Rookie mistake; Luke has long since learned to sit back and let his eyes do the work for him, first by sweeping the room for the pick of the litter, then by winking at her. But the teenager has nothing if not energy to burn, so it's just as well that he finds himself one of the Porter girls to get out on the floor with. And though all that stomping he's doing is only distantly related to dancing, it looks like he's having himself a good enough time, so Luke takes in the rest of the crowd, watching how they roll into each other, simmer and bubble, but somehow never quite boil over.

Until, quite suddenly, they do. Angry sounds, then a recognizable yaw and sway to crowd, half the clientele trying to get away from the fistfight that has broken out, and the other half trying to join in. For a second only, a gap between this person and that opens just wide enough for Luke to see through to the heart of the scuffle and watch Bo cock his fist back with intent to let loose.

"Bo!" He's a fool for hollering in an attempt to stop what's already happening in double-quick motion. Besides, it's his own fault, honestly. He should know that a couple of years and a birthday that signifies adulthood doesn't change much of anything. Leave Bo to his own devices, stop watching his every move, and that boy is capable of finding trouble faster than a hound dog after a coon.

He's on his feet with some half-baked intention of yanking his cousin out of the fight, even if he already knows that Boar's Nest brawls have a forward momentum that could rival a freight train's.

"Bo!" he hollers again in some vain hope that his cousin might stop, put his hands up, and make peace without noses needing to get bloodied or lips split. But he already knows it's pointless. Though he can't see the fight for the tangle of excited bodies that he's weaving his way through, he can hear the sound of skin hitting skin, the cheers and jeers of idiots that don't know that a man can be killed by a balled fist. "Damn it," gets lost under his breath, because he has no interest in fighting, doesn't ever want to curl his fingers around each other and feel them smashing into another human being again.

Shoving isn't hitting, it's just the quickest way to get from one point to another. His ear takes a cuff, but that can be ignored because it's just a moron on the outskirts of the trouble trying to get in on the excitement. He's got someplace more important to be than tussling with the riffraff on the edges of the fight; his destiny is right there in the middle. Where he has no plans, whatsoever, of hitting anyone.

"Bo!" Close enough, finally, to be heard, and those deep blue eyes turn to him, brimming with trust.

Which just opens up an opportunity for good old Ernie Ledbetter to let loose with a low sucker-punch that makes Bo double over in pain.

"Hey!" He has no desire to fight, his fist doesn't want to clench, lacks any inclination to smash into another man's face, but then there's a pain in his knuckles, and Ledbetter's stumbling back. Another fist comes from somewhere, making contact with Luke's chest, a screaming voice in his ear, and then there's Ledbetter getting shoved back toward him by the guys on his side of the fight. But none of it matters, everything might just as well be frozen solid until Bo coughs, clutches at his gut, stands upright again and proves that he can breathe.

After that it's a melee, fists and elbows flying, contact made accidentally as often as intentionally. And Luke takes more hits that he doles out, but that's only because he allows no distractions to his mission – which includes both making sure that Ernie doesn't get a chance to hit anyone else (because somehow or other, Bo has been a stand-in punching bag for the guy whose beef is really with him) and that no one gets close enough to his younger cousin to hurt him. It's an uphill climb, one that would be easier if he had more arms or if Bo wasn't so hellbent on staying right in the thick of the trouble he's found. But Luke's head is clear and his body well-trained and he's accomplished far more impossible tasks. Besides, the crowd, once oppressive at his back, seems to be thinning, and then he hears it.

"_Incoming!" Marino's nervous call._

"_Ours or theirs?" someone screams back, but it's too early to know. Everything is sound and smoke and—_

"Get down!" he warns, and Bo ducks under the swing of Mike Holland's right uppercut.

"_Incoming!" comes the echo across the ranks. Meyers, this time, running toward him._

"Stay low!" he has to order, because otherwise one of those hits is going to connect.

"_Sarge." Meyers isn't listening, just keeps on coming at him like some sort of madness has infected his brain. "Come on, Sarge." But Luke is not bleeding, doesn't need medical assistance, doesn't need anything except for his men to listen to him._

"Get—" There's a hand on his shoulder, pulling with some urgency. Distraction when he what he needs is to dedicate his full attention to the battle roiling around him.

"Luke," he gets halfway spun around by the grip. Popping blue-gray eyes, black smudge across the cheek, but it's not war paint. Just greasy Cooter Davenport. "Sheriff's coming!"

Right.

He catches hold of Bo's arm, mid-swing, and starts dragging.

"Luke," gets crabbed at him, and the boy can complain all he likes, but the Dukes are getting out of here. Because if there is one thing Luke has learned, it's that it's never wise to hang around when your enemy has more artillery than you do. Battling Ernie Ledbetter and cronies is a fair fight. Once the law shows up, brandishing handcuffs and Miranda Rights, the odds will get uneven real fast.

Stumbling over furniture, both intact and broken, leading his resistant cousin generally toward the door, and somehow the boy manages to stall him just long enough to grab their coats. Good move, keys are in his jacket pocket and it'll keep them from having to hotwire their own pickup. Back on track to getting out of here, almost to the door when they nearly get flattened by a pair of fast moving men in blue. He drags Bo into the shadows until those bodies are past them.

"Freeze, freeze!" he hears as he and Bo sprint out the door, giggling at their good fortune.

The pickup is parked at the far end of the lot anyway, beyond the range of the looping red and white flashes thrown by the still spinning gumballs on the top of the two cruisers just outside the door. Seems safe enough to stay in the shadows and watch the fun unfold, so he just pulls the tailgate down and gestures for Bo to sit. Uses his sleeve to dab away the blood from where Bo's nose must've taken something close to a direct hit.

"That's your good shirt, Luke," his cousin complains, but it's not important.

"Better mine than yours, which wouldn't never come clean," what with it being made of that heavy fabric that seems to catch hold of stains and never let them go. Besides, what Luke's wearing might have been his best shirt once upon a time, but by now it doesn't even fit him right anymore. "Don't worry about it."

"Luke," his cousin insists on fretting. "Daisy's gonna kill you."

Boy has no idea about real danger. And Luke has every intention of keeping it that way.

"Quit squirming," he commands, taking his own seat next to the teen. "Shirt's already stained, so just hold still long enough for me to get the blood stopped."

Doesn't take any time at all for them to be sitting halfway peacefully, shivering while their coats lie uselessly next to them on the steel of the truck's bed, and watching the roadhouse door to see whether the jail's going to have any occupants for the night.

"All right," he scolds. "The way I got it figured, you started it, right?"

A shrug, and without enough light to properly see the look on the boy's face it's hard to tell whether it's sheepish or proud.

"You know you ain't supposed to swing first. Not unless you got a real good reason."

Bo pushes his hand away from his face. Just as well; seems like the blood has stopped flowing anyway.

"I reckon I had a good enough reason, Luke."

"Yeah?" he says, and he has every intention of pressing to see whether the logic behind the fight will pass the Jesse Duke test, but right about then there's a commotion at the other end of the parking lot. Rosco Coltrane, sounding every bit like he's the drunken one, is scolding one Cooter Davenport as they both emerge from the bar's front door.

"I'm telling you, Rosco, I ain't seen no ruckus in there. I got no idea who called you or why."

"Cooter," gets snapped back at him. "You ain't fooling no one. There's more chairs without legs in there than a legless caterpillar." A fine example of Hazzard-law logic.

As if to prove the point, Enos comes bumbling out the door to join his boss; no doubt his feet got entangled in the broken furniture.

"Well then, Rosco," and no one ever accused Cooter of being a wise man. His obvious lack of respect for the sheriff comes sneering right off his tongue. "Best you speak to the proprietor about that." Which would be one Boss Hogg, and everyone with eyes can see that the lawman is afraid of his boss. "If he'd spend a few bucks to replace all them old chairs and stools and things, they wouldn't go breaking every time someone tries to sit down."

"Cooter!" But Rosco's brain has been outmatched by a halfwit. "Just get."

"Good night to you, too, Sheriff Coltrane," the mechanic says, tipping an imaginary hat as the lawmen climb, grumbling all the way, into their cruisers. Doors slamming and old springs creaking as the abused cars make their way around to the exit. He and Bo have to duck when the headlights sweep past where they're huddled in the bed of the pickup. Blinkers flash and the cop cars are gone, one heading south and the other north. Probably off to find some bushes in which to hide and lie in wait along High Ridge Road for some poor moonshine runner.

Meanwhile, the mechanic ambles across the parking lot toward them.

"You're welcome," he says when he gets close enough. "Though I reckon I owed you that a few times over."

"You called him, didn't you." Bo's the quick one tonight.

"Of course I did," the mechanic admits. And since he's not bound by Duke blood to be honest about anything at all, he promptly denied any and all knowledge of anything like a fight once the law showed up and Bo and Luke were a safe distance away. "Almost didn't do no good though. You boys was really engrossed in that-there fight. I musta called your name five times, Luke, but it was like you was somewhere else."

Yeah, well. That's not really anyone's business.

So, "Thanks, Coot," he offers. "We'll catch you later. Me and Bo better get home where I can get a good look at his face and see whether Jesse's gonna take up beating on us where them guys in there left off."


	25. Part Three, Chapter Twenty-four

**Chapter Twenty-Four**

_March 1973_

"Three o'clock will roll around quick enough." A finger points to his chair at the kitchen table. _Don't sass me, boy_, it warns. Which isn't fair, he's not sassing, he's offering his assistance. "Now you just sit down there and eat. I ain't writing you no excuses for being late, neither."

"Don't worry," Luke says as he shuffles slightly left to make room for both of their elbows to fit. It's in moments like this that he realizes just how much he has grown. Used to be that his older cousin took up more than his share of their side of the table, and now it's his long arms and broad shoulders demanding a greater percentage of the space. "I'll make sure you get to spend some quality time with Maudine."

"I ain't got no complaints about the plowing," he reminds them all. Oh, he might have, once upon about four or five years ago when his arms were weaker and his body lacked the mass to keep the blade from dragging too deep in the ground and getting hung up in the heavy clay. Sure, back in those days it's likely that he set to carping about splinters and blisters, and his more solidly-built cousin would come to take over so he could go and sit in the shade of the willow tree, sip at some tart lemonade, and rest. But that was when he was nothing more than a boy.

"Good," Uncle Jesse puts in. "Because you'll get to do plenty of it. Once you go to school and get back home."

"Fine," he agrees. It's not like he has a choice, anyway. He's going to school instead of staying home to help with the planting, because even if recent harvest and sowing seasons have featured him doing a man's work, now that Luke's home, he's back to being a kid. He snatches at a sausage on the serving plate in the middle of the table, since he's got all of about fifteen minutes until the school bell, and it's a five minute drive.

"Bo," and gets his fingers slapped. _Prayer first_, Jesse's hooded eyes remind him.

He huffs because he knows what comes next. Luke smirks, or maybe downright laughs at him, Daisy musses his hair, Jesse frowns at the whole bunch of them, and they all turn into the little angels that their Aunt Lavinia raised them to be. For all of thirty seconds until grace is said, and then they get turned loose to make short work of reducing breakfast to crumbs.

Except Luke misses his cue. Forgets to poke fun at his overeager young cousin, just sits there with his elbow on the table, chin resting on knuckles, and stares off at same old nothing that's always been on the wall across from where they sit. Puts a hitch in the whole family's get along, the other three of them frozen in that same state of suspended animation that Luke is, until Jesse starts to stumble over grace. Everyone, including Luke, moves quickly to properly fold their hands.

And that right there is another reason that his uncle ought to be writing him an excuse for missing the next three days of school – the fact that Luke is not exactly at his peak of health. Sure, he's not complaining of pain or discomfort, hasn't coughed once, isn't flushed and sweaty. But he's got dark circles under his eyes and an attention span as short as his hair (which is actually growing back now, though it's still pitifully awkward-looking), and though his dog tag finally disappeared a few weeks ago, it would be fair to say that Luke is not yet fully back in Hazzard.

"Dang it, Bo, would you stop messing around and pass them eggs?" And there his cousin has to go, catching him in the one moment during which his own concentration slips.

"Just hold your horses," he says, doling out a hefty helping onto his own plate first.

"Boys," is Jesse quietly reminding them that Aunt Lavinia raised them both with better table manners. Daisy giggles, reaches across the table to pat his head, and he reckons that it all feels pretty close to normal.

But normal also means that he's the useless kid of a cousin again, the one that's not really needed on the farm anymore. So when he does his penance and makes it through the endless school day, instead of rushing home, he rewards himself a few extra minutes in the parking lot, flirting with Becky Lee Oliver.

By the time he drives himself home in the black pickup that he and Luke share, and wanders his way out to the fields with the remains of girl's lipstick on his cheek, he's probably a good half hour behind schedule.

"Boy," Jesse snaps at him from where he's just pulled Maudine to a halt in the middle of a row of freshly plowed ground. Luke, walking a few paces behind the old man with a three-quarters full fifty pound sack of seed on his shoulder, has no choice but to stop as well. Daisy's still half a row behind with the hoe, and doesn't even know he has arrived yet. "You'd best get your priorities straight."

His uncle doesn't say another word, just unhitches himself from the plow and tosses the lead to land at Bo's feet. Apparently it's his turn to take over behind the mule, but that's all right. Luke's standing there with a smirk on his face and a twinkle in his eye that silently congratulates Bo on having his priorities _right_.

* * *

At least it's not a bad one. Oh, it's disturbing enough to make him shake it off, to pull himself out of it, but there's no blood, no one dies, and he wakes up without hollering. So it's just a dream – even if it's set on the wrong side of the world, stinking of burnt things, thundering with artillery – it's not a nightmare.

Or, if it walks the edge of being something ugly and horrifying, it stops short at the unwavering rhythm of Bo's breath. Stable, steady, and it centers him, even as the boy to his right mumbles something without waking. Followed by a sleepy giggle, then the rise and fall of that broad chest resumes its regular tempo.

He's halfway to a stand before he achieves full consciousness, but he's got nowhere to go. Thanks to what might be the brilliance of his uncle, or may just be the uninterruptible cycle of the seasons of death and life, he's back to sleeping nights. Planting is, as it always has in the past, kicking his tail so hard that his exhausted body is insisting on sleep when it can get it – in the dark hours. Sure, he has yet to make it through a whole night, but he's really not complaining. If he has to be jarred out of his sleep by dreams he doesn't want, there's something very comforting about doing it just a few feet away from his peaceful, undisturbed cousin.

He's had nights of lost sleep his whole life, but they used to be very different. Oh sure, sometimes he'd toss and turn because of some pained muscle or deep thought that wouldn't leave him to his own peace, but mostly being up in the middle of the night meant that Bo was suffering in one way or another.

Cute, his cousin was always adorable, so long as the sun shone and there was at least a sliver of a chance that the day would hold out the promise of a slice of apple pie or a chocolate chip cookie. But nights, well, there were things lurking in the darkness that only Bo could see or hear, shadows and shapes that hankered after the taste of little blonde boys. Kid would climb into Luke's bed mumbling about spiders or fires or mean teachers with sharp teeth and beady eyes, his face wet and his nose sniffling. Hot and sweaty from his nightmares, but the boy could not be sent back to his own bed; trying would only lead to whining. Luke would throw his sheet over both their heads and tell Bo that the bad guys, whoever they were, couldn't see through blankets. And even if they could, they wouldn't mess with two Duke boys because there was safety in numbers. It hadn't made a lick of sense, wasn't backed by anything close to logic, but that was just as well. Reason had no place in middle-of-the-night discussions or in Bo's frightened mind. He just needed to be close enough to feel Luke's heartbeat against his own, and he'd calm himself. Shared space and too much heat, but after they'd settled, those ice cubes that passed for Bo's feet would find Luke's shins, and somehow or other it would all balance out so they could both sleep.

"Luke," gets mumbled now, but Bo's not awake. It's just the only clear word in a sleep-sentence that gets lost to the solitude of night anyway.

Would it be so terrible, he wonders, if he were to wake Bo now, to complain of dreams filled with choking smoke and angry gunfire? To remind his cousin of debts owed from nights long past, to seek calm through the steadiness of the boy's unburdened heartbeat, to let himself be comforted by the notion that whatever demons want to chase him through the night would get confused if he wasn't in his own bed?

But he knows that roles don't reverse that way, that if he were to admit to his own fears, his cousin's calm would melt like ice cream on a hot July afternoon. Whatever worries Luke could express would simply be multiplied between them, and he'd go dragging his cheerful, innocent baby cousin – the boy with the temperament that can start a barroom brawl without fear of consequence, can grin with glee as fists fly, and almost instantly forget the violence afterward – down into the mire with him.

And sometimes it seems that seeing the sunshine in his cousin's smile and watching the boy's stalwart refusal to grow up or weigh himself down with heavy thoughts is about the only hope he sees for a future that is better than the present.

* * *

_April 1973_

"You drive." It's an offer, but he's not surprised when it gets turned down. It's precisely what Luke's been doing since he came home in December: shaking off propositions, walking away from fun, folding into himself there in the passenger seat while Bo takes the reins.

"After all that work I put into getting Jesse to let you drive on runs? You got to be kidding me. Besides, it'd break old Harvey Essex's heart if he didn't get to play hide and seek with you tonight."

He giggles. Because it's slightly funny, maybe even a little bit true. Because it's some sort of a twisted compliment from his usually stingy-with-praise older cousin, because it's what they – both Duke boys – expect him to do. But the moment is fleeting; even as the answering smile flickers across Luke's face, the boy is slipping away his own thoughts again. Frustrating beyond measure to have his cousin right here and gone at the same time.

He couldn't have been more than five going on six when the measles epidemic went through the school, and one morning Luke didn't get up for chores. At breakfast Bo and Daisy got told to stay out of the boys' bedroom and leave Luke be so he could get well in peace. He heard the words, nodded his head and agreed, but he didn't really understand. Sick, well, he and Luke had both been laid up a few months earlier with headaches and fevers. He could remember feeling pretty tired and miserable, but that hadn't lasted real long, and before a full day could pass two bored and on-the-mend boys created a whole new version of baseball that could be played within the confines of their room. It had been a lot of fun until their aunt came in to find them running in circles and forcefully tucked them back into bed.

So he had intimate experience with sick cousins, and by afternoon he went marching into his room, because surely by then Luke would be ready to play. Encountered a slight setback when he found the boy sleeping, but that sort of problem had never stopped him before. Crawling right up onto the bed, he sat on his cousin and started to tell him about black-eyed susan he'd found in the farmyard, and how Daisy might have picked it first, but he's seen it first and therefore it really ought to be his, but—

Got surprised when instead of rolling his eyes and telling Bo to let Daisy have what she wanted because she was a girl, Luke called out for their aunt. Not hollered exactly, more like croaked, and before Bo could understand it all he was getting grabbed by big hands, lifted right up into the air, and deposited on the far side of a suddenly closed door. Uncle Jesse's wide finger was there in front of his face and that booming voice was reminding him that he'd been told to leave Luke be, the boy was _sick_, and Bo getting on his bed with him was just plain foolish behavior.

Clear focus of the memory gets lost somewhere after that finger wagging in his face. He remembers the shame, the sorrow in his gut because he'd had no intention to hurt Luke. He remembers the loneliness, and the fact that for the next few nights he got taken off to sleep in the big bed with Jesse while Lavinia stayed with his older cousin. Scared, eventually he remembers getting scared, because Luke was supposedly right there, but Bo couldn't see him, hear him, talk to him, and there was no way to be sure he hadn't gone. And Bo knew all about gone, he'd known gone since he was no more than two and his parents were gone.

Scary, but it only lasted a week at most, probably less, because time stretched out like taffy when he was a boy. Eventually he got let back into his room, got himself a good look at Luke, got told to stop staring, got a tongue stuck out at him and shoved, but it was good natured, got sent to dig the baseball bat out of their closet, and he got his cousin back.

Bo wishes now that he'd paid more attention back then. Lavinia, she knew all the folk remedies for any malady, and though Jesse's got a fair amount of skill when it comes to healing, no one could come close to his aunt's abilities. He reckons that if he'd shown any inclination or interest, the woman who helped to raise him would have been perfectly willing to pass her knowledge down to him and he might have some idea what to do for Luke now. Because his cousin is right here and gone at the same time, and his lame attempts to get the man to engage in a conversation are eliciting nothing more than grunts. May not be exactly traditional, but what the man in the passenger seat has got is some sort of illness all the same.

Harvey Essex is of no help, what with how he doesn't even show up tonight for the chase. No sign of any sort of law; most likely some other poor sap's probably got them all on the hunt on some other ridge in the county. Which makes this nothing more than a pleasant little nighttime ride and if Luke's going to keep to himself over there, well Bo might just prefer female company which would at least hold some promise of romance.

"Whoa, slow it down, Bo. You trying to kill us?" It's only when those words get yelled in his right ear, when hands come over to try to grab hold of the steering wheel, that he remembers the other half of what it felt like to be kept from an ailing Luke all those years ago. How the anger had coursed through him with no place to be directed. Couldn't be mad at Luke because he was, as Bo kept getting reminded, sick. Couldn't be mad at Daisy, she was a girl, and besides, she hadn't had any part in kicking him out of his own bedroom, chastising him, keeping him away from everything important in his life. Couldn't be mad at Jesse (oh, but he was, he was livid with his uncle for growling at him, for yanking him out of his own room, for letting Luke get sick in the first place) or Lavinia, so he'd quietly seethed until the illness had passed and his toppled world had righted again. "Ain't no reason to be taking chances like that!"

At least this time around things are a little more even. He may be angry, but so is Luke over there, giving him orders to decrease his speed as if Bo is nothing more than a novice at this sort of thing, as if he hasn't spent the last two years delivering moonshine without serious incident.

"Just get us there in one piece," is Luke's final word on the subject. And Bo obeys, ears burning all the way. Because he has to admit, he skirted the edge of the ridge at a dangerous velocity for the sole purpose of getting a reaction – any sort of reaction – out of Luke. And it worked, but it doesn't make him feel any better.

He takes them up to the delivery, lets Luke deal with collecting the agreed-upon pay, then drives them home, granny-style, at a demure fifty-five. Silently, because neither of them seems to have a single thing to say to the other.

— — — — — — — —

"It just ain't fair, is all."

None of it is, really, from Luke's behavior to the way Bo's role in the family has been downgraded back to useless kid. And then there's the fact that, if he wants private time with Jesse, he has to let himself get dragged around on his uncle's self-appointed rounds through the community, doing various good deeds. Seems like some sort of penance for the liquor the old man brews up, except that instead of saying _Hail Marys_ he makes sure to bring a pie to the orphanage, then to look in on the elderly and homebound. Today's fascinating adventure includes a bumpy ride out the rutted road to where the widow Parsons keeps on trying to run that old farm that never did produce much, even when her husband was still alive to till and plant its fields.

"Well now, Bo, seems to me that you and me had ourselves a long talk about _fair_ and _not fair_ back when you was just a red-faced wee one, stomping your foot on your Aunt Lavinia's freshly waxed floors." Talk, well that's one name for it. Bo's muscle memory seems to think that the broad side of Jesse's palm did the lion's share of the talking – to Bo's hind end, which isn't really known for its listening skills.

But yeah, he remembers parts of what he was told back then. That only a brainless man would expect things to be even and balanced all the time, but that Bo should remember what injustice felt like, because it was a heartless man who wouldn't try to make sure that everyone had an equal chance for success. A whole bunch of adult gibberish that came with the promise that someday he'd understand it all. And maybe he does and maybe he doesn't understand that particular bit of wisdom now, but it's got no bearing on his current situation.

Speaking of going over old ground, the pickup sways a hard left as Jesse avoids a mud hole that's been taking up the middle of this road since the time of horse-pulled carriages. Bo clings hard to the window frame to ensure his continued physical health and well-being.

"Yeah, but when Luke was my age—"

"You been complaining to me about things not being fair between you and Luke since you was knee-high to a grasshopper, boy. And I been telling you for just as many years that the two of you is different and ain't nothing ever going to be exactly the same for you. When Luke was your age he was the oldest of you kids, and now that you're the same age he was back then, well, you're still the youngest." So, that's going to be the old man's tried and true tactic: to talk in senseless circles that can't be argued with, what with how they can't even be understood. "Maybe I could help you if you'd just say what's really bugging you instead of complaining about things you can't change."

Things he can't change, like the fact that the pickup's crawling at a snail's pace through ancient dips in the land, and the greater chunk of Saturday is going to be lost to helping a widow plow soil that's never grown much of anything other than rocks. His favorite day of the week, or it used to be, spent goofing off with Luke and Daisy for most of his life. Now the girl is off in town helping the Ladies' Auxiliary plant spring flowers around the trees in Hazzard Square, and Luke's… keeping to himself on some remote corner of the Duke property.

"I miss Luke."

That's the most unfair thing, right there. For a year and a half, wanting Luke home and safe was on endless repeat like a broken record with a jagged edge that cut and scraped and pricked at him, just about brought unwanted tears out of him every time he dared to speak it. But his wish came true, early, unexpectedly, and almost completely – Luke was fine but for an ugly haircut and an almost imperceptible scar on his upper arm – except it seemed he'd needed to be a bit more specific in making his requests of the universe. _Please can I have Luke back, all the way back and like he was, not the sort of back that means his body is here but his heart and mind are lost somewhere else._ In a place where Bo's never been and can't properly imagine. The pictures in his mind, influenced as they are by those few photos that his cousin sent home, are in shades of gray and lack focus. Not to mention how they include other guys, friends Luke made that Bo will never know, and sometimes he wonders whether his cousin would be happier sharing a room, meals and chores, moonshine runs – heck his _life_ with one of them.

Jesse, to his credit, doesn't point out the obvious fact that there's no point in missing a man that's less than five miles from him right now, that eats at the same dinner table and sometimes even manages to sleep in the same bedroom. He just nods his head, runs his fingers through his beard, and stares out at the pitted road in front of them as though there's anything out there that has changed in the last century or so. Stays quiet, studious, doesn't offer pearls of wisdom, long parables or even lectures about how lucky he is to have his oldest cousin back at all.

"Dang it, Jesse," not smart, not at all smart to begin any sentence there, but this silent drive over rocks and ruts just keeps on agitating him. Like a shaken beer, he's got to let loose eventually. "You told me to be patient, but that ain't worked. I figured if I got him out on moonshine runs he'd remember what it's like to be a Duke, but that ain't worked. I'm thinking that maybe if you talked to him…" or lectured, more likely. A few yarns about the importance of family, the old man's fingers linked together to show just how close they're meant to be, followed by a directive to just… be more present. And nicer, maybe. "He's changed, and I don't like it."

"Well now, Bo," isn't a good start, not at all. Oh, the tone is fine, it's respectful and even halfway thoughtful like he's taken his nephew's words to heart and given them his most serious consideration. But anything that starts with _well now, Bo_ is destined to end in a _no_. Although in truth he's perfectly willing to keep on needling in case there's any chance of a hidden _maybe _or _yes_ in there. "I could talk to Luke. I suppose I could tell him how you feel and what it is that you want from him. I don't know, it might even work." Well, this is unexpected. Best sign of hope he's seen since the New Year. "But I don't reckon I ought to. There's just some things a man – and you been announcing for almost six months now that you're a man – just has to take care of for himself."

Well. That just yanks the rug out from any follow-up arguments he might have made.

"Besides," Jesse, never content to ruin his day just once, goes on, "he ain't the only one who's changed, boy. You're different too."

"Shoot, I ain't changed none." Far as he can remember, he hated school before Luke left, and there's no doubt that he still hates it now. But he's kept on going, because it was what his kin wanted for him, and since he wastes day after day behind a desk, he hasn't had the chance to do anything halfway interesting at all. He's just as stuck here as the dirt under the truck's wheels and the trees that have been growing along this patch of the road since before Uncle Jesse was born. "Except I grew a few inches."

"Well, I guess you would know best about whether you've changed. Though I don't much figure you would have stood up to your cousin about not wanting to play basketball a couple of years ago."

"You saying I shouldn't have?" Seems to him like such a notion goes against a least a couple of the values old Jesse instilled in them. Like _think for yourself_ and _if it don't feel right, don't do it_ for two. Besides, Luke may be a top-notch grudge holder, one of the best in the county, but even old stubborn has always let go of his resentments after a while.

"No, I reckon you made the right choice. Basketball ain't got to be your favorite game just because your cousin likes it. You and Luke ain't the same, and it's a good thing you realized it." Quiet then, to give him time to digest the underlying meaning, as if it was at all subtle. "I just figure that before you go off telling Luke about all the things he ain't anymore, but that you wish he still was, you'd best do some soul searching and decide what you hope to accomplish. The way I see it, you're bucking against your cousin every time he _does_ do things like he used to. You keep saying you're a man, and maybe you are in some ways even if you still got some growing to do in others. But one thing you ain't is willing to take every order he tries to give you, or let him take care of you like he used to. So before you go complaining to him about what your relationship with him _ain't_ no more, best you figure out what you want it to _be_. It's a boy who whines about problems, and a man who offers solutions."

The pickup dips and sways around yet one more rut, the trees keep on standing by the side of the road, and he's no closer to a solution than he was before he came out on this endless errand.

* * *

He's supposed to be enjoying the present, at least if he wants to take Uncle Jesse's advice. And he reckons he does, seeing as the old man's pretty wise and has his best interests at heart.

The present, which finds him using the blade of his pocket knife to loosen a rusted screw, his hands covered in grit and nicks from a day of climbing through this automobile graveyard.

"Hey, Bo," he hollers, hears a _yeah_ come echoing back from somewhere to his right in this Stonehenge of wrecks. "Bring me that wrench, would you?" Before they get too much further into this little project, he's going to need to invest in some tools. Nothing too fancy, nothing he's going to get particularly upset about if it gets dropped into the rotten-milk smelling puddles of this place, just something that can turn a screw without jumping out of the groove with every twist.

His cousin rounds the wide hood of the rusted out remnants of the once-red Chevy Nova that Luke's using for a step ladder. Cars piled double and triple-decker, making fool boys risk their health to get to the pieces they want.

"What you got up there, Lukas?"

A perfect, blue-sky day, sun glowing down on their already browning skin. Smile across Bo's face so powerful that his nose wrinkles with the effort to keep it there, and if the boy had tail it'd be wagging in wild circles.

"Nothing, yet." Not until those wide blue eyes stop staring up at him with all the trust in the world, and those hands remember that they've got a tool in them that Luke asked for. "Crankshaft, maybe. If—" he warns, because as impossible as it might seem, Bo's glee just got that much more palpable. "It turns out to be in the condition I think it's in. And the only way I can know that," his right hand is out, fingers wiggling as a reminder to the boy of what he's supposed to be doing down there. Metal gets slapped into his palm, already hot and slippery from where it was held in Bo's sweaty fingers. "Is if I can get it out of there."

"You can do it, Luke."

Cute. His cousin hasn't wanted to be called that since somewhere around the third grade, but that's exactly what he is. Literally looking up to him right now, as if Luke is capable of anything in the world and—

He pulls that old faded bandana that was once red and is now closer to pink out of where he jammed it into his pocket this morning. Considers wiping the handle of the wrench with it, but enough of his own sweat has mixed with Bo's on there by now that there's no point in worrying about it. Hands the rag down to his cousin instead.

"Wipe off your face, cuz." Because the smears of grease across his bare chest are one thing; the natural result of bringing a lazy boy to a dirty place. But those smudges across his face look an awful lot like jungle mud put there deliberately to hide the boy from the enemy and—

He drops the bandana into Bo's waiting hand, then turns back to the junker with the pretty crankshaft.

The present, his youngest cousin is a master of embracing that which stands precisely in front of him without thought to what he might find if he glanced forward or back. It's—again, cute, fun to be around, but it's also dangerous. Because the boy wouldn't recognize or even see danger until it walked right up and smacked him on the nose.

Which is why, even if Jesse's advice is sound, Luke can't quite take it. Someone has to go worrying about the future – Bo's future to put a fine point on it. The thing of it is, he wants his cousin to survive, and not only that, to stay in one piece. To remain just as ridiculously happy as he is today, picking the jewels out of the red dust that has settled over dead cars. And that's going to take some forethought and planning, because the way the kid is going, he's liable to run himself right off the cliffs of High Ridge Road one night, just for the thrill.

In love with speed, that's his cousin, and he wouldn't be a Duke if he wasn't. Luke just figures that all that forward momentum needs to be contained to the safety of a track, or at least a mapped out course, and run out of the boy's system during daylight hours. The Duke boys need themselves a stock car. And Luke's just crazy enough to think that the two of them can build a better engine than they can afford to buy.

If his crankshaft-selecting skills are any indication, they are in good shape.

"Hey, Bo," he has to holler again now that he's got his prize free from its chassis. "Where you at?" he adds as he jumps off the remnants of the Nova.

"Over here," is not much help, what with all the obstacles and echoing surfaces between him and the voice, but he's nothing if not a good recon man. He locates the boy on the far side of the old school bus that divides the junkyard into east and west sections.

"What you got?" That long body is squatted low over something Luke can't see, and it reminds him of a younger version of the boy, all but sitting in the creek, fingers grabbing at tadpoles.

"Pistons." Goes to show how much the kid has grown – he's not wandering off in mid-task to find trouble like he used to, he's staying focused.

"Good find." He manages, just barely, to stop his tongue before it follows that up with _kiddo_ or _little cousin_. It would be a shame to ruin this fine day – downright perfect, really, featuring two boys standing amongst the rot and ruin, hands and clothes filthy with red clay and orange rust, letting the sun burn brown into their skin – by getting his cousin riled up over nothing at all. So he instead of blurting out patronizing nicknames he offers a hand down, helping his long-legged cousin to a stand and leading him over to their pickup to deposit their finds. Silly grin as Bo tries to wipe his filthy hands on the tail of Luke's open shirt, pushing and shoving and a giggle that's prettier to his ear than morning birdsong.

It's on the way home that it flies apart with all due speed. Driving over roads he knows like the lines that run across his own palms, no need to pay attention to anything, so he lets his mind wander.

"Hey, Luke?" He's not sure how many _hey-Lukes_ that makes, but it could easily be five. His cousin asking for his attention, over and over, to say not much of anything other than _today's been fun, ain't it? _

"What," he mumbles, same as he has every other time, never taking his eyes off the road or his mind off his own thoughts.

"What was it like?" comes tumbling out, fueled by his cousin's unending nervous energy. "Being in the Marines, I mean?"

_We stand ready to listen_, his uncle said that afternoon a couple of months back, while they sat on the splintered porch. _Neither me nor your cousins can possibly know nothing that you don't go ahead and tell us. _

"It wasn't no picnic." That's all he wants to say, because the thing is, he has no more inclination to go talking about the Marines than he does to go pulling out his own toenails by the roots, but he reckons he owes Bo a little something by way of explanation when it comes to some of his worst behavior. "It was a lot of sleepless nights and hardworking days, Bo."

"Kind of like farming."

Not at all like farming.

"No, more like war. Like if Harvey Essex really was our enemy, or if Rosco ever actually wanted us dead. It—" Damn it all, he really doesn't want to talk about it. "It ain't nothing like nothing you've ever experienced before, all right?" No, it's not all right, it's nothing like all right, considering he's snapping at his cousin, who in turn is huffing out a sigh of frustration. Or annoyance, more like. In a minute they'll be at each other's throats – just about the same time as they're due to pull into their own driveway, where their uncle will likely come waddling out of the house and threatening to tan their hides for fighting.

"Fine," Bo says, but he doesn't mean it. "I just reckon I'm going to have to find out by myself, then."

It's like taking a rabbit punch to the breadbasket. His breath is gone, his stomach clenches against the assault.

"What are you talking about, Bo?"

A long hand waves through the air. "Don't go getting all worked up, Luke. I ain't exactly planning on going off to war." Well, that's a relief. "I just been thinking about joining the Marine Reserves."

"What?" His cousin has never been one to think too deeply or work through the details of much of anything, but he reckons it's as clear as day that signing up for any branch of the service, reserve or not, is just about the same as begging to be sent off to war. Sure, almost all of the boys are out of Vietnam by now, but Luke reckons they're just one false move from getting sent back over there. "Bo, you ain't got the brains of a turkey." And, just as he expected, they're parking under the old oak tree just as his temper's getting nice and warmed up. "You just listen to me, boy," he lectures as if he's got as much seniority over Bo as his uncle does. "You ain't to go signing up for nothing – nothing to do with the Marines, or the Army, or any other fool-stupid idea you can come up with. You hear me?"

But he doesn't wait for an answer, he just slams out of the pickup, hears the springs creak to protest the violence with which he handles the door, and marches double time away – from his home, his family, and his cousin's voice behind him hollering about what a jackass he is.


	26. Part Three, Chapter Twenty-five

**Chapter Twenty-Five**

_May 1973_

"You got any homework?"

"Cooter," he groans back. It was his intention to waste time at the garage because the fool who works here never treats him like a kid, but with that question Bo realizes that in fact Cooter has _always_ treated him like a kid. It's just that the mechanic, nothing more than an overgrown kid himself, has never acted like Bo's relative youth is any big deal.

"Well now, you got to understand. My hind end is kind of soft," which is more than Bo needs to know. "And I'm sort of partial to sitting. So if you could see your way clear to giving me your word that I ain't gonna get whipped for letting you hang out here when you got more important places to be, I promise not to ask you about homework no more."

"You ain't gonna get whipped, Cooter. And school's almost done, anyways." All right, so there's still close to a month to go, but after twelve excruciating years of it he reckons he has earned the right to consider the ordeal nearly over.

He gets handed a length of tubing, which seems to be some sort of tacit agreement to let him help out with whatever repairs that the mechanic is affecting on the Dodge Dart in the middle of his shop.

"All the more reason to make sure you do any homework they give you. Last thing you want is to have to repeat your senior year."

Oh, hell no. He'd ignore all of Luke's blustering and run off to join the Marine Corps right then and there if that happened. Not that he'd live long enough to have to take that sort of a drastic action, not if his uncle learned he'd failed his final year of school.

"I already told you, I ain't got no homework."

Greased palms up in surrender, as if bullets could actually come out of the finger that Bo is leveling at him. "All right, take it easy. I just figure there's got to be some reason that you decided to grace me with your presence." And there's that lopsided smile that never fails to look cute no matter how grown up the man in front of him is supposed to be. "Not that you ain't welcome, of course."

Ah, Hazzard. He has no choice but to love it here, even if everyone in the county is just as lacking in subtlety as Cooter, and just as eager to get the inside scoop on everyone else's business.

"What are we working on here?" It's an attempt to redirect the conversation away from his motives in spending time here.

"A car," the fool answers with a perfectly straight face. Bo frowns at him until the mechanic's ridiculous laugh breaks out. Infectious thing that has Bo chuckling in spite of his frustration, then allowing himself to be directed about where to stand and what to do. Mechanics is more Luke's thing, but that's all right. Cooter's doing all the tricky parts while Bo contributes brute strength.

"Does Luke seem normal to you?" Bo blurts in the middle of a conversation about whether the Braves have a chance of making the playoffs now that they've traded for Davey Johnson.

"Well, now, I ain't sure what you mean by normal, Bo. He seems all right, I guess."

"He don't seem," there are all kinds of words he wants to insert into that part of the sentence, from _erratic_ to _weird _to flat-out _angry_. "Quiet, to you?" he settles for instead.

"Luke ain't never been particularly talkative. He just says what he thinks he needs to say, then stops saying anything at all, if you know what I'm saying." Jesse doesn't wholly approve of Cooter, and this here might be why. Those brains probably did get pickled back in his wilder days, but Bo insists on believing that the man's heart is in the right place. "Now hand me that clamp, would you?"

"It just seems to me that I shouldn't have to go starting a fight in the Boar's Nest to get him to say anything at all," he grouses as he slaps the tool into that filthy palm.

But somehow Cooter doesn't seem too interested in the Dodge Dart anymore. Or not in fixing it, at least. He turns around and sits his broad hind end on the corner of the hood, eyes fixed on Bo all the way. Low chuckle again, and, "You mean that brawl a couple of months back? I just about got hauled down to the jail by old Rosco for that one. You started that?"

He's not sure whether to be proud or ashamed, even if that silly grin sort of urges him toward the former.

"Yeah," he admits – or brags; he can't make up his mind which it is, but it doesn't matter. Honesty forces him to amend it anyway. "Well, I had some help from Ernie Ledbetter."

"Yeah? What did old Ernie do?" Cocked eyebrow from Cooter, like he somehow doesn't expect to find Ernie at the heart of the problem. And maybe he doesn't. Bo can't swear that the guy is a general troublemaker. His jibes seem to be specifically aimed at Dukes – or maybe it's Marines.

Bo shrugs, turns slightly away. "Said stuff." Which is not really a good enough reason to go swinging first, and he knows it. "About Luke. Called him a," he hesitates there. It's nothing he takes any pleasure in remembering, and yet the words keep wandering through his brain, uninvited, at all the stupidest times. Crawling under his skin like locusts, eating away at his grain as he works, stands, eats and sleeps not three paces from Luke. Sometimes he wants to blurt them out, just so his cousin will deny them. Or maybe to find that fissure in Luke that will make him explode when struck, because the last five months have been like watching a stone that gives all appearances of being stable where it lies but when no one's looking it trembles and shakes as if an earthquake's caught inside it. "Baby killer," he finally finishes.

"What?" Cooter hollers, and for a moment Bo can see the rabid dog that lurks inside his friend. Gives Bo the momentary urge to restrain the wild beast against running off to bare his fangs, to bite and rip at Ledbetter until he's torn him to shreds. And then it's gone. "You didn't listen to him did you?"

"Nope," he answers, finding a seat of his own on the tool cart. "I hit him."

"Good that you ain't listened," Cooter answers. "Because that's just one of them things he probably heard on the TV. Them war protesters that go to Washington, they been saying it all along, and maybe some things happened over there that shouldn't have and maybe they didn't. Either way, I'm sure Luke ain't had no part in anything like that. It's just Ledbetter mouthing off. It ain't nothing to take seriously. Also," gets added, soot-colored hand patting at the knee of Bo's jeans. "Good that you hit him, because he deserved it."

He knows that Ledbetter was just shooting his mouth off, he really does. And he wishes his brain would forget the words, because he doesn't really want to use them to hurt his cousin. He has a simple need to bring Luke back out of whatever long-term stupor he is in.

"I know. I'm just tired of waiting for Luke to be himself again." And he has to believe that his cousin lurks somewhere inside of that shell of a body he's been inhabiting; otherwise he really will go crazy. "Uncle Jesse says to give him space. And that Luke ain't the only one who has changed. He says I ain't the same, neither."

"Well," Cooter says, pulling himself off the car and stretching his back. "I reckon y'alls Uncle Jesse knows best. He's right about you anyways. You done growed up a lot while Luke was gone – into a reckless cuss. I'd guess he's as confused about you as you are about him. Now, I am officially declaring it lunch time. You coming with me?"

To the Boar's Nest, where lunch will consist of grease, cleverly wrapped up in a roll and disguised as a hamburger and topped off with a beer? Of course. Bo nods his head and leads the way out of the darkness of the garage.

– – – – – – – – – – – – –

"Tell me this, Bo." He is back where he started, which is to say he's standing in front of his uncle, his chin down and toe all but digging at the loose dirt of the farmyard. He's a kid, not a grown up, and he needs the man that raised him to help solve his problems. "Do you really want to join the Marine Reserves?"

"Maybe," he answers, probably slouching enough that his Aunt Lavinia would nudge him upright and remind him that a gentleman always stands straight and tall. "I ain't sure Uncle Jesse, I just—"

"Or was saying that the best way to rile your cousin?"

His head comes up fast then, his body becomes rigid and he has every intention of declaring his innocence against the charges, but that firm stare that fixes on his features stops him cold.

"I ain't sure about that, neither," he admits. "Jesse, I done what you said." His hands are jammed into his back pockets, the brief flame of anger has already been extinguished, and he reckons he's about as miserable as he's ever been.

A reckless cuss, that's what Cooter called him, and he reckons that Daisy would agree. Moving too fast for his fear to keep up with him, and that might make him nuts in some folks' eyes, but they'd be wrong about that. Life gets simple somewhere around a hundred miles per hour, where anything like deep thoughts and worries get pulled out the window to go sailing off cliffs and drop into valleys and be forgotten. Decisions make themselves without effort, because life is preferable to death. Stay on the blacktop, keep the pedal down, outrun the hounds, let the adrenalin flow, have fun. Speed is exciting, but only when shared – with friends, pursuers, but maybe most of all, with Luke. Or it used to be anyway, before his cousin started nagging him about slowing down.

"I thought about what I want things to be like with Luke." Dissected the notion, more like, studied on it for far longer than he ever concentrated on any kind of schoolwork. Mulled it over, looked at it this way and that, and just maybe his brainy oldest cousin would be proud of all the effort he put in. If Luke ever bothered to notice, that is. "And about the only thing I could work out is that – there ain't never been nothing between us before." The way Luke spent his days and nights, the trouble he found his way into and out of, the girls and the races and the long afternoons of doing nothing much at all, had always been shared. "Now it's like – I don't know nothing about a whole big chunk of his life, Jesse. I figured maybe we could just start fresh from here," with the engine they've begun to build, and the hound pups they can raise now that Luke has given him the sweet spaniel that's just getting old enough to come into season. "But he still ain't really ever come all the way home from where he was. I tried to get him to tell me about the war, but—" all he'd really heard was that he didn't know anything, couldn't imagine or relate it to anything he _did_ know, just about got told to shut up, when it came right down to it. "It didn't work, and then I—I just thought that maybe—you told me he didn't want me to go to war, but I just thought maybe if I at least went into the reserves I'd—I'm a fool." A fool wishing for his younger body back, from a time when it was small enough to crawl under the porch and hide, or when it would have been acceptable for him to even try. He's spent all this time telling his family and friends that he's a man now, so he has to face up to this, has to look his uncle in the eyes and let the old man see the tears that he can't quite manage to blink away.

"Okay." The old man closes those eyes that seem to have gotten that much darker in contrast to his ever-whitening hair. Overall pockets get patted and searched until a white handkerchief is found and handed over. "You've been about as patient as you know how, I expect." A hand pats him on the shoulder while he wipes his eyes, then he gets pulled into a hug. "But I reckon you're just going to have to give old Luke some more time. It ain't, as you keep saying, fair. But it's so just the same. Don't none of us know what he's been through, but he ain't going to tell us just because we want him to." A thump on his back and he gets let go of. Tucks the rag into his own pocket, because he doesn't figure Jesse wants it back now anyway. "You got to wait him out, boy. And steady yourself, too. Because when he gets around to telling you – and there ain't no doubt in my mind that it's you he'll come to when he's ready to do the telling – you'd best be ready to hear it. Without," the old man says, finger up to freeze everything right there until he's had his say, all of it, "judging him."

* * *

A hand closes around his arm; he resists the powerful urge to shake it off.

"Lukas." Because those are the grease-black fingers of an old friend who means no harm, even if he is taking his life into his hands holding onto Luke that way. "Leave it be. It looks fine, at least until you start messing with it."

His hair; of all things, it has come to this. Here he sits, battling with the least groomed man in three counties over the state of his own unruly curls. Which don't look fine no matter what his friend says, they're too heavy on the top or too short on the sides – either way, they just won't properly settle. He's not thrilled about it, because his hair has finally grown out enough that he almost looks like a Hazzard boy again, but he's going to have to get it cut. Evened out somehow, from the high and tight that it used to be to something that looks presentable. But that can, as his friend has so tactlessly pointed out, wait until another day.

"There some reason you called me out here?" Other than to tell him to stop messing with his hair; there wasn't any compelling need for Luke to come all the way out Jessup Road to the remnants of the Davenport farm for that. "You need my help growing weeds or something?" Because that's about all this farm has produced since somewhere around the Depression, when Davenports quit fussing with the land and went full-time into the business of resuscitating dead – or gravely injured – cars.

"I'm right proud of them weeds," Cooter informs him, and he is too, just look at that haughty tilt to his chin. "Much hardier than last year's. I expect they'll be hip high come August, and come fall when you're all busting your humps harvesting, my weeds will just blow away on the breeze. Won't have to strain my back none." The bottle of beer in Cooter's hand gets raised in some sort of a salute to his wonderful crop. Luke clinks his own bottle against it even if the toast is ridiculous. Seems only fair considering that the beer came out of Cooter's Styrofoam cooler, which sits at their feet. No furniture out here, just rusty rakes and shovels, so the two of them sit on the railings with a silent prayer that the wood underneath them has not rotted so deeply that they will shortly find themselves on their backsides in the dirt. "Hey, Luke," marks a change in tone, as close to serious as the county clown can come. At least for a second, then that easily overtaxed brain seems to lose track of what it wanted to say.

"Yeah?" he grumbles back, trying to keep this conversation, whatever it's about, moving along. Not that he minds sitting here with Cooter – weeds, rickety porch and cheap beer aside – just taking it easy. The mechanic may have lost a few brain cells somewhere over the last five years or so, but he's easy to be around. Never asks for more than companionship, doesn't judge, and if Luke might let slip a few words here and there about his days sneaking through the jungle with guys named Marino, Myers and Ackley, Cooter's face never goes flat, his eyes never look away like the dirt under his fingernails has suddenly gotten just that much more fascinating and requires some deep study.

"We been friends a long time, ain't we?" Then again, maybe it's not Cooter's easygoing nature that has allowed Luke to tell the occasional odd story of his experience in the Marines to him. Maybe the man doesn't flinch at war stories because he has the brain power of a gnat.

"Since before we was born." Predestined, in truth. The relationship between the Dukes and the Davenports of this generation was sealed in fate by the friendships of their parents before them. Cooter ought to know that every bit as well as Luke does. And he shouldn't even be drunk yet, not when they're still on their first beer.

"All right then, I'd appreciate it if you'd keep that in mind when I tell you what I got to tell you. Because I'm kind of partial to my teeth and don't really want to be parted from them." Charming smile to show those fine specimens, and there's nothing Luke can do but laugh at him.

"I ain't got no plans on separating you from your teeth, Coot."

"Good," gets followed by a long pull on the beer bottle, as though he really believes it'll be his last. Cooter always has been a dramatic cuss, leaving Luke to indulge him with a smirk. "I been thinking, buddyroe," which means whatever he has to say must be serious, if he's gone and engaged his intellect. "And the way I see it, you need to make up your mind. Either you go ahead and admit that getting drafted and going off to war changed you, or you got to forget everything that happened, and go back to being who you was before you left."

Even before he embalmed his brain, Cooter wasn't ever really a smart man. Clever, amusing, good-hearted, but logic never was his long suit. So it's no surprise, really, that he doesn't even know what he's talking about or what he's telling Luke to do.

"If I could forget it, I would." He takes his own deep swig of the swill in his bottle. "I been trying."

"Well, since you ain't never gonna forget," Cooter says, catching his left wrist to prove that he's fussing with his hair again. "I reckon you're just gonna have to admit that you're a veteran."

"Shoot," comes out more frustrated than he would like, but then he's busy shaking his friend's grip off his arm at the same time. "I don't even know what that means."

"Well, neither do I," Cooter offers helpfully. "But what I do know is that you keeping to yourself like you been doing is hurting Bo."

"He's all right." It's only instinct to defend his cousin, or himself, or both of them at once.

"Luke, you know and I know that you know your cousin better than I ever hope to." That's what those lost years in Texas have done for the man – allowing his mind to string together sentences as twisted as that one. "But you wasn't here to see him missing you, so you don't know what that looks like. Which is a shame, because if you did, you'd recognize that that's what he's doing right now. At least when you was away you used to write him letters, so he'd have half a clue what was on your mind."

"Don't nobody want to hear about what's on my mind if it means talking about what I done in the service," might just be the coward's way of saying that he doesn't want to talk about it, or has forgotten how.

"You really gonna let a couple of morons like Dobro and Brody go making you think that way? Sure, they just about run right out of the garage when you mentioned the war a couple of months back. Near as I can figure, it was guilt that made them do that. And maybe envy, for what you had the guts to live through and they ain't sure they could have." Pause there for another swig; lecturing Luke appears to be thirsty business. "Besides, them idiots ain't your kin, and they ain't spent a year and a half missing you with their whole hearts, neither. And they also ain't spent all their lives looking up to you." A pause, another deep swallow of the swill in his bottle. "It's your story to tell, Lukas. Don't let nobody else go telling it for you."

Now that right there is a mighty curious thing to have said. Makes Luke wonder what he means by it, who might have said what and when and—

Cooter reaches out and clinks his nearly-empty beer bottle against where Luke's is held low against his own thigh, condensation leaving a wet spot on his jeans. "To the best damn vet Hazzard County has ever produced," is the fool's toast. "Now, what's your advice about how I manage to grow them weeds taller? I reckon I want me some prize-winning goldenrod come fall."

* * *

_June 1973_

The grip on his ankle is warm and strong, the voice telling him to get up is rough. His fingers slip and claw, looking for purchase anywhere, but everything around him is moving at precisely the same speed he is. Or almost everything; by the time his fingertips curl around the edges of his mattress it's too late, what with how most of his body is already hanging off the bed.

"It's early," he complains. Or means to, anyway. The whole dang thing is so silly that a giggle escapes from the corner of his mouth despite the fact that this here struggle is deadly serious. "Still dark." And this time of year, the sun shows its face in these parts plenty early enough that there's no reason to go beating it to rising. "Besides, I was out late last night."

"Ain't no excuse." It's trying, in that heavier voice that accompanied his cousin back from Vietnam, to be very solemn. But Luke is, quite literally, pulling his leg. "Besides, you was out doing what?"

Celebrating his graduation, at long last, from desks and books and teachers and boredom. And Luke already knows that, which is why he doesn't wait for an answer before going on.

"You finally got what you wanted: no school." And that doesn't begin to explain why Luke's dragging him out of bed this early. His pajama bottoms are slipping down in his cousin's grip; he's left with the choice between sacrificing one if his hands to grab the elastic waist or losing the only thing that is keeping him decent. "You're a working man now, cuz. You've earned the right to go out there and do all them chores by yourself."

He catches his pants just before he might have lost them entirely. There's no real compelling need for modesty between him and Luke, but with all the noise they're making, it should only be a matter of seconds before Daisy shoves their door open to find the source of the ruckus. Of course it also means the end of any fantasy of his staying on the bed. He, his sheets, blankets and pillow land in a twisted up lump on the floorboards, and his mattress is left teetering and threatening to follow after his sprawled body.

"I don't remember you doing chores all by yourself the day after you graduated," is a perfectly reasonable observation, as far as he's concerned.

But, "Now, that ain't got no bearing on the current situation," Luke insists. "Come on boy, on your feet."

He reckons he can recognize a game from miles away, and there's never been a single one of those that he wasn't willing to play, especially when he figures he has a better than average chance of winning. So he considers grabbing Luke behind the knee in an attempt to trip him up so he'll join Bo on the floor. Decides, however, that it's not the best choice of actions. Because this man standing over him, offering a hand down to help him to his feet, is unpredictable. Fun can flash over into anger quicker than a striped lizard running on hot asphalt, and dang erratically too.

So he finds his feet and a pair of jeans, an old ratty tee shirt and his boots by the door, and follows Luke out to the barn. Sits on a hay bale and tinkers with the engine they've been building while Luke does the chores, because his cousin claims to be genuinely proud of him for finishing school and wants to reward him – for one day only. Back in the house with the sunrise, and Daisy's there with kisses and bacon – his favorite – frying in the pan. Jesse smiles, winks, and gives his kids the day off from having to do anything around the farm. And this is how he comes to be wasting the day along the creek bank, his hook in the water, playing Rummy with Daisy while Luke makes an honest effort at catching their dinner. He wins, his female cousin takes that rather personally, and somehow or other, the two of them wind up splashing into the creek while Luke sits on the bank, shaking his head.

He's tired and sunburned, but game, when catfish dinner is done and Luke announces that they're going out. After all, Luke hasn't drifted off into his own world even once today, which decreases the likelihood that Bo will have to engage in fisticuffs to keep him in the here and now. Besides, he reckons that half his graduating class will be at the Boar's Nest, including some fine looking young ladies that will most likely keep Luke's attention from wandering too far.

But when they get to the end of the driveway, Luke turns their pickup away from town and heads off onto a dark series of dirt trails. Bo knows them like he knows his own farmyard, lets his body shift automatically as the bank of a curve dictates, feels the bumps as if they were nothing more than his own footsteps over a path he created. And if his body and brain are utterly unsurprised to find the truck pulling to a halt at the bottom of Round Hill, his stomach tightens in on itself anyway. The still site that lies on the ridge above them hasn't exactly been the scene of the Duke boys' better moments since Luke got back from war.

But he walks in his cousin's footsteps up to the clearing anyway, then keeps on following after Luke picks up one jug of 'shine and continues his trek. The trail leads them away from both the still and the car, over a rise and back down into the hollow, finally ending at the edge of Billy's Pond, so-named for some long-deceased Hazzard forefather. Luke lights on the sand there, back resting against a lichen-covered, mostly-rotted log, and unseals the bottle. Offers it to Bo, who is settling in next to him, for the first swig.

"Tradition," Luke offers by way of explanation. "Rite of passage. You're all grown up now, cuz."

Yeah, so he's been trying to tell everyone for more than a year now.

He eyeballs his cousin in the moonlight that reflects brightly off the smooth surface water in front of them. "I don't remember this tradition happening when you graduated." Not any more than the false tradition Luke introduced this morning, whereby he was supposed to have done all the chores.

"You was underage when I graduated," Luke shrugs back at him.

"Hell, Luke," he answers, then takes a drink from the bottle, because his cousin's impatient hands are already reaching for it. Swallows more than he means to, has to shake his head and let out an appreciative holler before he can hand the bottle over to his smirking cousin. "_You_ was underage when you graduated."

"Yeah, well, I done had my tradition anyways." Which means that Luke probably came up here with the likes of Dobro and Brody, Cooter and maybe even Enos. Momentary jealousy spikes through his gut over events that he didn't get invited to, but any envy about parties from three years ago gets quickly drowned in another emotion. Luke, with only too-young cousins, was forced to celebrate with whichever band of guys he could scrounge together. Bo is lucky enough to be able to share this night with family.

He can't help himself, though he really ought to think twice about it. These things can turn ugly long before he even knows what happened or how. But thinking – even once, much less twice – is for the likes of Luke, so as soon as his cousin is done gulping down his own swig from the jug, Bo throws an arm across those muscled shoulders. Gets surprised when Luke just grins at him and hands the bottle back.

* * *

"First thing they do is cut all your hair off. All of it; they don't leave you with none at all." He's a sneaky, low down sidewinding snake of a cheater, but then it's a dangerous game that Bo's been playing, and he reckons it's within his rights to pull out all the stops in trying to sway his cousin's point of view. Besides, his words are, strictly speaking, the truth. "Takes about three weeks to even grow out to what you saw when I got back in December. Then they keep making you go to the barber every ten days so it don't grow no more than that."

He's not drunk, but he's dang close. Relaxed, maybe, truly at ease for the first time in longer than he can remember. Only one of his ears is cocked toward the path that leads here, and it's hearing nothing that resembles enemy footsteps. The other potential access to their position requires a water approach, and that would involve disturbing the flat surface of the pond, which his eyes are loosely focused on.

"Not in the reserves." But the boy's eyes are big; he's not wholly convinced of the accuracy of his own assertion. "They don't."

"You don't get to sleep but a couple of hours a night and reveille comes earlier you ever been awake in all your born days." In fact, Bo's been known to hit the sack later than he'd have to get up if he enlisted.

"I could handle it."

Apparently, he has to accept that he's a veteran, and his family stands ready to hear what he has to say. But he does reserve the right to select which stories he plans to tell, and if they all just happen to be the sort that will dissuade Bo from having anything to do with the service, well, that's his prerogative.

The draft is dead. Only about half as many men got called to serve last year as they did back when Luke's number came up the year before. As to this year, no one's published any statistics or anything, but he wouldn't be in the least surprised if no one got called up at all. Most of the United States troops are out of Vietnam now, with only a skeleton crew left behind to police this or that. Without begging for assignment in Vietnam, odds are Bo would never have to serve there. Unless, of course, the conflict resumes a greater intensity and new troops get sent over—

"Then there's all the physical training, day and night. You got to run for hours at a time with a fifty pound pack on your back. And when you get done with that, there's the pushups and squat thrusts and obstacle courses." The yelling, the humiliation, the personal attacks and whatever else it takes to break a man, and he doesn't even want to mention that part out loud so as not to mix thoughts of his sunshine-cheerful cousin with that sort of an experience. Bo is, technically, all grown up now. But his heart is that of a boy, and Luke would risk – has risked, when it comes right down to it – his life to keep it that way. "They even make you play basketball."

Wide, trusting eyes look up at him from where Bo is slouched against the log, and the boy might as well be five again. Then skepticism enters them and – "They do not!" – the moment is over. Luke snickers in agreement that that particular tale might just be the slightest bit tall. "But you had some fun though. I mean, your letters home, they mentioned some fun stuff." Yes, there were good moments with comrades, with Candy, even occasionally in the undergrowth of the jungle in a foreign land. But if Luke's got to be a veteran with a past, and if that past has to be shared with an innocent like Bo, well, he's going to be mighty choosy when it comes to which parts he describes. And right now his mind is set on never giving a single detail of anything that happened any further from home than Camp LeJeune. "You got to drive a tank."

"It's called an Armored Personnel Carrier." That's the training that he got, asserting itself. Unless a recruit wanted to be face down in the mud, he learned to refer to weapons by their proper names. "And yeah, it was fun to operate. If I had one here, I'd let you have a go at it. It just ain't worth joining the service to get to maneuver one of them things."

The jug, which has been sitting idle between his knees for what feels like hours now, gets hefted in his hand again. He considers another sip, but decides, based on the weight of what's left in there, that the Duke boys have had enough for one night. He corks it and stashes it under the log they've been leaning on. They really ought to be putting some serious thought into getting home, anyway. Jesse is not going to go easy on them when it comes time to do tomorrow's chores. But the light breeze off the pond is cooler than their bedroom will be, the pine-needle-strewn dirt feels soft where he sits in it, and his cousin's shoulder rests comfortably against his own. He's loath to do more than shuffle a bit to ease the slight strain from where his back's been pressed against the rough surface of the log.

"Bo, promise me," _that you won't go joining any branch of the service, ever,_ is what he wants to say. But it wouldn't be fair, because he's not drunk, but Bo might be. And eliciting a pact from a boy in a suggestible state goes against his basic principles. Besides, what was it Jesse said? _If you want to serve your country, you know I'm behind you. I'd just as soon you didn't get yourself killed is all. _He reckons he owes his cousin that much respect, at least. "That you'll think on it – long and hard," like for a couple of decades or more, "before you go joining any part of the service."

Again, those unquestioning eyes turn to meet his. "Okay," his cousin replies.


	27. Part Three, Chapter Twenty-six

_**Author's Note: **This chapter, oh _this_ chapter - got written once then twice, got rewritten, written again and one more time, and then this week the rewrites all got rewritten again. I've run out of ways to rewrite this same set of words, so here it is, ready for prime time or not._

_Winding down because all stories must eventually (even those that seem like they never will) and it's time to thank you all again for coming on this ride with me. I've enjoyed the conversations that we've had along the way._

_(Not to worry, I'm just being dramatic. There _is_ one more chapter after this one.)_

* * *

**Chapter Twenty-Six**

_July 1973_

"Oh, Bo honey," Daisy's cooing and patting his head as though he's just a cute little thing like Brown Sugar— who is less a puppy than a young lady these days, prancing around and enjoying her ability to make all the boys around her go crazy with her newfound maturity. "I'm sorry." She really must be; she's indulging his presence in her kitchen long after the breakfast dishes have been cleared away and washed. By this time of day anyone of the male persuasion is meant to be out tending to the soil, running errands or just plain wasting time so as not to incur their female cousin's wrath as she goes after the household with frightening efficiency. He sometimes thinks that she harbors a certain amount of resentment toward her domestic chores, and anything that has the audacity to slow her in her progress toward completing them is subject to whatever violence she wants to commit. But then again, she takes a fierce pride in her accomplishments and won't let anyone help her. Which leaves the Duke men in an unenviable position as pertains to wishing to spend any time in their own house. "But maybe you're just expecting too much of Luke."

"You really think it's too much to ask to go hunting with him," which Bo invested the better part of the summer in talking Luke into, "without him turning into Uncle Jesse on a rampage once we get out there?"

"Aw, now, sugar," comes his answer, while her fingers muss his hair. "You've got to admit, Luke ain't never been shy about telling you what to do." And how to do it, for that matter.

Jesse says Bo's the one that's changed because he doesn't always listen to Luke's orders anymore, and there might be a kernel of truth to that. But what he's trying to tell Daisy about wasn't a simple power struggle between cousins who are old enough to know better. It was a tirade, it was Luke calling him every insulting name in the book, it was his cousin turned into any teacher that ever humiliated him, it was Rosco Coltrane on a tear with handcuffs waving in the air. It was red-faced screaming, it was—

It was a side of Luke that Bo reckons he's only seen tiny slivers of before, here and there. In a fit of temper and hollering about foolish mistakes that could get them killed, when all he'd done was get a foot tangled in some kudzu vine. It wasn't the sort of thing that could be helped, and he can think of at least one time, years back, when it was Luke that was bent over and trying to free his own foot while mumbling words that wouldn't be fitting to recount for Daisy right now. There was no reason that his predicament should have bothered his cousin, who was a good twenty paces ahead of him. Sure, he didn't go about the process of freeing himself exactly silently, but they hadn't yet gotten far enough from the road that they ought to have been expecting any encounters with wildlife anyway. About the worst he could have anticipated from Luke by way of reactions would be rolled eyes and thinly disguised laughter.

But what he got came just this side of violence, words pounding at him like fists, anger vibrating through his cousin's body, from his lowered eyebrows right down to his taut shoulders, pointing finger and rigidly planted feet.

"Here," his cousin had ordered, spit flying with as much vehemence as his words. The rifle Luke had been carrying got shifted from his right hand to his left, then he'd dug deeply into his own front pocket. Keys pulled out and just about slapped into Bo's hand. "Go home. You ain't fitting to be out here, stumbling around like you ain't got the sense of a turkey. You'll get your damn self killed that way." There had been a split second when Bo thought he was about to get handed the gun, too, but it hadn't happened that way. Luke had simply changed his bearing, then marched off into the woods alone.

"Not like he did yesterday," he explains to Daisy, who is so caught up in comforting him that she can't be counted on to properly listen to the story. Natural-born mother, that's who his female cousin has always been, even in the days when she was nothing more than a muddy-footed tomboy catching the frogs that were too fat and slow to get away from her, then bringing them home to cuddle as if they were her own children. "He ain't never been like that."

His Duke pride had risen hotly, tasting bitter in his throat when he swallowed it back down. Everything in him had wanted to fight, to assert himself against unwarranted accusations, to remind Luke that he might not be a Marine like the guys his cousin served with, but he was a dang good hunter and more than that he was _family_. And he might have, if he'd recognized the man who had just humiliated and shamed him, but that red-faced screamer – that wasn't Luke. It was someone he'd never met before, didn't like, and didn't want to be around. So he was halfway relieved to watch his cousin disappear into the thickest trees.

And he'd figured that it'd be a day, maybe two, before he had to face Luke again, since he was driving home in their pickup while his cousin went on hunting without him. But he'd only been home a few hours, meeting up with Jesse in the kitchen and making thin excuses about his early return before escaping to the relative privacy of an oak limb overhanging the farmyard. Sitting there feeling his hind end go slowly numb and Luke had come strolling onto the property, head and shoulders down. No way he should have known where Bo was, but when he got under the tree those intense eyes had come up to study him for a moment.

"You okay?" Luke had asked, as if it had been some sort of accident or injury that had sent him home from the hunt.

"Yeah," Bo had mumbled, and his cousin had stood there a second, like maybe he had something more to say. But he didn't; he just finished looking Bo over, nodded, then walked into the house.

Miserable, that was what dinner – attended by the entire family at Jesse's insistence, though Bo had to assume that neither he nor Luke really wanted to be there – tried to be. Never quite made it there, got stuck somewhere between awkward and unpleasant, because Daisy had kept up enough chatter to make up for her silent kin.

But that was all right, because somewhere after midnight, when he realized that after a few months of settling back into sharing a bedroom with him, Luke was going to spend the night somewhere else, full-on misery made its appearance.

"He ain't never been nothing like that," Bo says again.

Daisy finally stops petting him and pulls out the hard-backed chair next to his – where Luke usually sits – to settle in close. "I know, sugar. I know," she finally admits.

* * *

"You look like," Jesse says, and there's a cup of coffee being offered down to where he sits between the laundry rack and the rusted out old water heater that he and Bo haven't gotten around to taking down to the junkyard yet. Dingy little corner of the back porch where a man might expect to be left alone, but that's a wishful notion. Then again, if he'd really wanted peace and quiet, he would have done well to leave the Duke property all together. "A man with a problem."

His head drops and a snicker escapes without him meaning for it to. His uncle has a talent for understatement.

"I'll grant you that," he agrees, taking the mug in his hands. Cup's not even particularly warm and it seems counterproductive to go drinking cold coffee at midnight. But the air around him is cloyingly balmy and there's no chance of him sleeping anyway.

"Must be a bad one," his uncle suggests. "To keep you out here wallowing with the mosquitos for two nights in a row." Wallowing is a pretty dramatic word for what he's doing; he'd prefer to call it sharing space with the mosquitos. Who make for relatively pleasant company, when it comes right down to it. They don't ask for anything more than his blood, and his skin's grown tough enough that he hardly feels it when they take that from him. "You want to tell me about it?" Unlike his Uncle Jesse, who is grunting as he sits down on the splintered floorboards, and pretending like Luke has a choice about spilling his guts right now.

"I, uh," he swallows a sip of the bitter drink that's been sitting in the pot for most of the day, gaining potency by the hour. The powerful brew serves as his best excuse for the way his words come choking out. Because a field report is supposed to be straightforward and devoid of emotion, but tonight Luke can't quite muster the detachment he needs to properly deliver it. "I brought my weapon to bear on him, Jesse," comes out quiet, breathy, wrought.

"Wait," he gets interrupted, but that's okay. He doesn't really want to talk about it anyway. In truth—"Are you saying you pointed that gun, the one that's a-hanging in that-there living room, at Bo?"—he'd just as soon Jesse went inside and got the whip.

"Yes, sir." And Luke wouldn't hesitate, he'd head right on down to the shed, would brace himself against the woodpile there and even drop his jeans if the old man wanted the whip to lash against his bare skin.

"That ain't the way Bo told it." There'd be no complaints, no pleading his case, he'd just let old Jesse have at him.

"He talked about it?"

"I asked how come you boys was home early and empty-handed. He said he didn't know anything other than that he got caught in a vine, and you screamed at him and sent him home. He didn't say nothing about no gun."

He'd bleed without complaint, if only Jesse could flay away his sins along with his flesh.

"He didn't see me do it. He was too busy crunching around in them leaves trying to untangle himself." If all the rotten parts of himself could come flying off with each lick of the whip, he'd stand still and let himself be thrashed raw.

"He didn't see it? Or it didn't happen that way? Which is it, boy?"

But his uncle is too kindly for that, lacks the strength and fortitude to unleash the sort of violence that it would take to beat all of Luke's demons out of him. He'll cling to a sliver of a doubt just so he can give his nephew the benefit of it.

"I—" Jesse'd never have the stomach draw the amount of blood Luke would have to shed before he could be cleansed of what he's done, who he's been, the ghosts of Tolliver and Renaud and other men that he might have killed but can't be sure. "It happened too fast, Jesse. I ain't sure. It didn't never feel right. I—the woods wasn't friendly, and I didn't like—" a man could do with some space to pace, or even to stand. But there's no one but himself to blame for the way he's cornered on his own porch with no place to go. "I was up front," taking point, because that was where he always belonged, regardless of rank. "And I didn't like how thick the kudzu was, and the fact that you couldn't hardly see nothing to the south, and then there was this crunch of feet behind me," like a man sneaking up on his rear flank, or sniper losing his footing for a second or—"I turned toward it with my weapon up – I reckon I pointed it at him, Jesse. Can't swear I ever got a bead on him, but – Dang it!" comes out strangled. "I didn't like the feel of the weapon in my hands to begin with, I didn't want to be carrying it into the woods at all, that's for sure."

"All right," Jesse soothes, like it was all an innocent mistake. And he'd be willing to concur that it was a mistake but the only thing innocent in all of it was Bo, standing there with those wide blue eyes looking at Luke with all the devotion in the world.

Where did it begin? Was it when he let his instincts overrule his brain and whirled with his uncle's flintlock raised with intent to shoot whoever was sneaking up behind him? Or was earlier than that, when he let himself be nagged into the fool hunting trip in the first place? Or does it have its real roots in him accepting a promotion that he wasn't ready for, just under a year ago and half a world away? "All right." Gets repeated as a gnarled old hand comes to pat his knee. "You didn't hurt him none. And you wouldn't hurt him none." Another pat to his knee. "I got every faith in the world in that, and you got to, too. Ain't no way a man can go through life with any sort of peace if he don't trust himself."

"Jesse—"

"You stopped yourself; you didn't pull the trigger or even properly aim at him. You didn't hurt him nowhere but his heart, boy. So you got to make amends for that. And when you do that, you'll be able to sleep again." The wisdom of an old man, the sort of thing a childhood version of himself believed in with every fiber of his being. And he wishes he still could, but it would require more innocence than he's got left. Besides, how can he apologize when he's not sure the extent of his sins? "As to the rest of it, I can't promise that you'll never have to hunt again, Luke. And even if I could, I don't reckon you'd be happy, missing out on doing something you always liked."

"I could hunt alone," he suggests, but he's fully aware of the futility before he's even done with the words.

"That ain't the solution, and you know it." Well, it could be the solution, or part of it. Except that there's no way that Bo's heart would be mended by a simple apology and an explanation that Luke's going to hunt without him from now on. If anything, that would only make it worse. "But you boys has gotten mighty lazy. Your aunt taught you proper bow hunting, but what do you use them bows for these days anyways?" His uncle doesn't want a real answer to that, his voice is up in that wheedling range that marks this as a good, old-fashioned dressing down. And it's such a normal thing, coming after all the uncomfortable bumps and jolts of the rest of this conversation, that it makes Luke relax a little bit despite himself. Like a lullaby following on a nightmare, his uncle goes on. "For shooting off flares and fireworks to fool revenuers. Well, there's better uses for them things, boy. You and your cousin, you take for granted all them fine lessons your aunt taught you. You ought to be ashamed."

"Yes, sir." Shame is an easy emotion to come by lately, but admitting to feeling it is not enough to satisfy old Jesse.

"You don't want a gun in your hands? You carry a bow. If you're carrying a different weapon, you'll remember where you are," the lecture continues in full swing. "You always got to pay attention to where you are, Luke. And quit fussing over places you ain't."

Bow hunting is a pretty good idea, actually, one that will require some time and target practice before they master it. And maybe, by the time they're ready to strike out in search of game again, he'll have stopped listening for the enemy's footsteps behind him.

"Now. I reckon we's given you enough time and space, boy. It's time you started acting like a member of this family again. So you go into that room in there, and you lay down. You don't get up until dawn, and when you do rise, the first thing you do is you apologize to Bo." Jesse pulls himself upright with a grunt, holding a hand out for Luke's empty mug. He tries to hand it over, but gets gripped by the forearm and hauled to his feet instead. "I love you, you big old fool," Jesse says, slinging an arm around him. "And I got faith in you. Go get some sleep."

* * *

Luke says he's sorry, and Bo—

Well, Bo wants to believe him. Ghostly blue eyes begging his forgiveness; a face that had looked lost, withdrawn. And there was no question in the moment that the apology was made, Luke was wretched and full of regret.

But the man currently sitting rigid in the passenger seat of Sweet Tilly, his eyes scrutinizing Bo's every move, is not even slightly sorrowful. He's a Marine Sergeant getting ready to bark out orders, to announce how the lowly Private that's driving this here vehicle had best slow down and quit risking his reckless little life. Contradictory as ever, Luke has all but forbid Bo from going off to serve his country, and yet he has brought a military attitude right back into Hazzard where he doesn't have any second thoughts about wielding it.

Daisy says his memories of pre-Marines Luke are inaccurate, that he can only recollect the best of times and has forgotten how he never much cared for being told what to do all the time, but she's wrong. It was never—

"Bo," is a complaint and an insult all wrapped up into a single syllable, his name. About the velocity at which they are traveling or their proximity to the trees on either side of the road.

It was never like this.

Jesse downplays it all. _Luke ain't the only one that's changed_ he says, and that may be true. Bo might have gotten that much taller, his shoulders may have widened, and his mouth might have gained a little more sass. Got himself that danged diploma Luke was so adamant about, played sports, got into fights that he might not have if his cousin had never left. But the bruises have faded, the wins and losses on the field have all been tallied and forgotten, his growth spurt is done. He could shred his diploma, he could slump when he stands, he could curb his tongue, but doing any of those things would amount to lies about who he has become. His changes, while irreversible, are superficial anyway. Underneath the bones that lengthened and the muscles that bulked out he's just Bo Duke, sometime troublemaker, fulltime skirt chaser, and best driver in three counties.

Luke, on the other hand, has gotten rid of the dog tag that he wore for months after he came home. The hair that was short and wiry has grown out and been trimmed back to the same basic cut he wore a few years ago. Most days he wears blue and the one shirt he owned that was anything close to military green got given to Bo before the spring thaw set into the land. Everything that outwardly marked his cousin as a Marine has been scrubbed away and yet somehow or other, Luke has never made it all the way home.

"There ain't no reason to go killing us," comes the same old, tired complaint. The least his cousin could do would be to produce an original objection.

"You used to trust me, Luke," he grouses back. "How come you don't no more?" He doesn't get an answer, but his cousin's silent tongue also means an end to the criticism. Blissful peace. But then again—

"Dang it, Bo!" Maybe he likes his cousin noisy. Loud, rough, easily riled to the fight. "Watch them ditches!" And if twiddling the steering wheel and threatening to skid off the slick clay of the road is the only way to do it, well, Bo can oblige.

Cooter, town fool and one-time drunk, might just have the one point of view on this whole thing that has come closest to being helpful. If Bo is, as has been suggested, a reckless cuss, that seems like a trait that he can use to his own advantage.

Too much patience, overly generous with the leeway. He's been too gentle with the rough boy that his cousin's always been, and he could blame Jesse. Their uncle kept telling him to give Luke space and time and... it's not the oldster's fault. The liberties he has offered to the man in the passenger seat are his own doing. Some deep-seated fear about how Luke might react or what could get said, the tales of a warrior that he's not ready to hear, the vulnerabilities he's never wanted the older boy to reveal. Bo is nothing more than a yellow-bellied chicken, a fool that's been running from the things his own cousin might tell him, an idiot for engaging in a tacit agreement with Luke that the best solution is for them both to suffer in silence.

"Is it that awful, cuz? So bad you got to go hiding your eyes?" Which is an exaggeration, or maybe it's more of a bluff. Maybe it's a shot in the dark, a goad, and just maybe it's whatever it needs to be in order to keep his cousin from retreating. Just like deliberately bumping off the road, briefly airborne to hop the ditch then slaloming through the trees is the adult equivalent to sticking out his tongue and challenging Luke to chase him.

Scared. He's been _scared_ of his cousin – not for the beating his muscled and well-trained body could dole out or the sarcasm that gets wielded like a club, but for the truth he might tell. He's been waiting for someone else to fix his cousin, or maybe for Luke to fix himself, but there's nobody else that can or is willing to try. Bo is an idiot and a moron and every other name he could think of, for accepting momentary truces and settling for the bits and pieces of himself that Luke's been willing to dole out instead of demanding the whole of his cousin.

"Knock it off, Bo!" Well, a man could take that instruction two ways, and Bo chooses to interpret it creatively, using Tilly's heavy frame to knock dead twigs off the ends of low-hanging branches. "There ain't no reason for you to go acting all crazy."

"Look who's talking," he answers back over the drone of the moonshine runner's engine. There's nothing in her trunk because they never made it that far. This here dispute started halfway to the still site where they would have picked up their cargo, if something more pressing hadn't come along.

Maybe he is crazy, maybe he's as reckless as Cooter says and every bit as dangerous as the Hazzard law thinks. Then again, risk is mother's milk to him. He was raised on it, and the man snapping at him from the passenger seat has as much to do with that as anyone. Of course, back in those pre-Marines days they always called it by a different name: fun.

"I ain't acting no way but—Bo!" Meaty hands reaching across the car to grab for the steering wheel, and even if he's not sure what he's trying to accomplish, Bo knows that he can't give up control. Everything between the two of them has been Luke dictating where and when, how and why. And it hasn't been working – here his cousin is, seven months home and half the time he might just as well still be in the jungles of Vietnam. Sharp left turn through the scrub and Luke's got himself pinned up against the passenger door. Only for a few seconds, but it's long enough for Bo to find the summer-dried streambed that he knows as well as the hallway between his bedroom and the bath.

"I ain't never known you to be so scared you got to go running in circles, Luke," he dares. Another bumpy mile or so and this twisting, jarring detour will leave them perfectly safe and completely alone on the most heavily wooded corner of their own property. He figures he's got that long to get over his fear, to stop avoiding this thing between them and go after it whole hog.

"I ain't scared," Luke retorts, but he is. It's all there in how he uses his right hand to brace himself against the dashboard as the left stretches out toward the driver's side of the car again. "I just don't see why you got to go acting like an idiot."

If Bo were a better man he would let that little remark slide. He'd recognize it for what it is: hurt pride seeking revenge. But his better nature hasn't reared its head in these parts in a long time. Oh, he's made a good showing of being patient and kind, but inside he's been seething with anger and frustration ever since that morning more than two years ago when Luke interrupted morning chores with the news that he'd gone to Atlanta for a medical exam and was about to get himself drafted.

He cranks the wheel to pull them back up out of the shallow ditch left behind by a stream that flowed across the land before Dukes ever tilled or planted this soil, before it got named as part of Hazzard County, from a time when Aunt Lavinia's ancestors were the only humans that roamed the region. Bumping over roots and dips, trees whipping by too fast for him to keep track of them, and just about the time he has to admit to himself that he's going too fast for his lack of familiarity with this little nook in the woods, there's a bang, a thud, the sound of bending metal, a hiss, a sputter and a wrenching halt to their motion. Steam fills their view out the windshield, curling around the narrow trunk of the sapling he's just hit.

He giggles, giddy at what he's done, nervous about what's to come.

"Damn it, Bo!" explodes to his right, and faster than he would figure is possible, Luke's out the passenger door and disappearing into the darkness that surrounds them.

* * *

"Oh no you don't, Luke Duke," Bo growls at him like something wild and toothy, a beast with claws and yellow eyes that lunges out of dark corners. Hand gripping to his wrist and he can hardly be blamed for the way he whirls with his own fangs bared, ready to fight. "I'm about dang sick of you running away from me. Every time you don't like something, you run off."

"Bo," he answers back in that tone that always makes his cousin's chin come up and his eyes flash. Trying to shame or embarrass or humiliate the kid that Bo has always been into leaving him be. "You got a delivery to make. You been doing them without me for years now—"

"—I don't want to do them without you. I ain't never wanted to—"

"—And you don't need me so just go off and—"

"Damn it, Luke!" is loud enough to startle the birds from the trees. "Stop! You keep running from what makes you mad, or scares you or—"

"Shoot," he answers back, yanking his arm out of Bo's grip. The argument spins around faster than a bootleg turn. What had been a halfway noble attempt to separate himself from the innocence of the youngster in front of him turns instantly ugly. "I ain't scared of nothing you can dish out."

Those right there are the words of a jackass looking to be punched. If Bo really wants to stick this out, Luke stands ready to present his chin for the hitting, to give the teen first licks, and maybe seconds after that. A few free shots to make up for weapons being aimed where they don't belong and nasty words getting spoken to a civilian brat who doesn't know any better. His hands, balled in fists at his hips, will stay down and he'll let his cousin exhaust this feral thing inside him to the beating he wants to dole out.

"Come on," he finds himself challenging, shoulders back, feet shifting to find a solid stance, right arm twitching like a car inching forward, trying for all the world to incite a false start to a race.

His cousin huffs, halfway snickers at him. "You ain't gonna hit me, Luke. You ain't never been willing to hurt me, and you ain't gonna start now." Fingers close around his arm again. "I ain't gonna hit you, neither." A glance back over his shoulder at their moonshine runner, still foaming at the mouth from the reckless abuse doled out to her. "Tilly ain't in no condition to take us nowhere, and I ain't letting you go. It's just you and me, Luke; ain't no Jesse to tell me to be patient with you, no Daisy saying I'm expecting too much of you, and no Cooter to get between us." Well, it's good to know that taming Luke Duke has been a community affair. And maybe it's not precisely news that Hazzard County lacks for privacy, but there are just some things—

"Bo," he warns. Or tries, because his bluff has already been called. No matter how angry he gets, his fists – which one injury-discharged Marine named Sinclair could attest are capable of dealing nearly-deadly blows – won't unleash themselves on his cousin.

And that's one of those things that happens to be no one else's business.

"You could run off, but I'm just gonna follow you. Besides," his cousin's grip is firm, nails digging into the soft flesh on the underside of his arm. "You can take off in any direction you want and keep going until you drop but you can't run from what's inside your head."

Scoff, that's what he wants to do, he wants to laugh and maybe snarl something snide about blonde logic. But he doesn't get time, what with the way Bo's tongue is wagging nonstop.

"I ain't sure what's bugging you, cousin. And the way I got it figured," which is a phrase the brat has borrowed from Luke, because Bo has never spent a day figuring anything out in his whole life. He's just sat back and enjoyed himself while someone else did his figuring for him. "You ain't likely to tell me. You're too dang chicken."

The brilliance of that blonde brain is dazzling. It's not reverse psychology, doesn't qualify as psychology at all. It's just a straight-up challenge.

"There ain't nothing bugging me—" other than an obnoxious cousin that has disabled their car then followed out here into the dense trees to keep after him without even pausing for breath.

"Of course there ain't," is a sarcastic interruption. The one thing Bo seems to have learned while he was gone is how to properly wield the rougher edge of his tongue. "There never is. That's why you go running off like a scared rabbit every time someone does something you don't like."

"—And I ain't running nowhere."

"Good." But that hand, tightening down on his arm hard enough to leave a mark, just doesn't believe him. "Then you'll stay here and listen to what I got to say."

Yeah, he can do that. Sure, the darkness of the woods beckons with promises of solitude and quiet, a sort of safety that Bo would never understand. But what was it that Jesse said? _The only place you hurt him was his heart_, which is about the only outcome worse than just plain old shooting the boy. Maybe Lavinia did know what she was talking about when she swore that her nephews carried each other's hearts in their chests.

"I reckon you ain't never going to tell me what's hurting you, Luke. And that's okay." There's inciting and there's lying, and Bo's straddling the line between the two. "So long as you come back home. Full time."

"I ain't been nowheres else but here in months." If his tone accuses Bo of being less than logical, that's only because the boy deserves it.

A deep breath and, "Fine," Bo concedes. "You ain't running from nothing, you ain't been nowhere but here, and you ain't never going to tell me nothing. And I ain't even going to try to make you." The clawing at his arm lets up, his sweet-natured cousin rubbing to repair whatever superficial damage he might have caused. "But that don't mean you got to go through nothing alone."

"Bo," he tries to scoff, but that hand tightens back down on him again.

"You got me now. You ain't got to keep on believing that the only people you can count on are guys you just met yesterday and you ain't even sure of they're going to be around tomorrow."

Hand stops clutching at him, or maybe he stops struggling against it. Hard to say, and it doesn't matter, because in a second it's squeezing at his shoulder instead.

"I reckon I ain't exactly been as good to you as I could have been. I been—"

"Bo," is an attempt to call a halt to this thing, but he ought to know better. Bo's mouth has always been a runaway train.

"—selfish and angry. Jesse—he told me what you done for me and why and—hush up, Luke," comes out before he can even begin to interrupt. "And I reckon I ain't never thought real hard about it. But it couldn't have been easy on you. Getting ripped away from your family." Sure, that night in the Summit Federal Building wasn't a ton of fun for him, he might have been a little bit scared, but he wasn't the one who had cried. "Going through boot camp," which had been unpleasant enough, but he'd emerged stronger for it. "Not having no control over where you got sent and when, who you got paired up with and why. Having to rely on strangers." His brothers-in-arms, though he didn't let himself think about them that way.

"I reckon ain't none of it been easy on you, getting shot at, shooting back, maybe even killing someone, watching people die."

Marino and Meyers, who never wavered in their loyalty to and support of him, Ackley who saved his life, Renaud and Tolliver, who made it home but not in one piece, Jervis and Sinclair, both of whom suffered for Luke's mistakes— even Candy Dix, his relationship with her the first casualty of war, and he can't think of any of them without—

Pain. He doesn't expect it, hasn't planned for it, doesn't want it, but there it is. Not like the jarring agony of falling out of the sky without a working parachute, nothing close to the searing burn of shrapnel in the arm or the throbbing echo from taking a right hook to the jaw – it hurts somewhere deeper than his skin, the layer of muscle that lays beneath or even his bones. Caught out in the woods with no weapon to fight that which has taken aim at his heart and fired, and all he can do is close his eyes against the assault. His entire hitch in the military was spent with full awareness that he could die; maybe some part of him was waiting for the explosion that would take him away. What he'd never known, nor allowed himself to seriously consider, was that he could _hurt_ like this and yet go right on living without reprieve. Bo is still there talking to him – or at him, because he's not listening anymore – and he lets the pain wash over him like wave after wave on a Parris Island beach. Underwater and drowning in distress, and there's a hand at the back of his neck, then arms around him that must be clenching too hard because his chest hurts and his breath comes in ragged gasps.

"I'm sorry, Luke." Fevered tone of the little boy his cousin once was, coming out in the deepened voice of a young man. Sorry for things he didn't do and can't fix, and if he had any breath for speaking, Luke would inform his cousin of that little fact. About who ought to be apologizing to whom, but then it changes. "I've got you, Luke," could be Jesse's words, or Lavinia's or even Sergeant Tolliver's. But they're not, they're Bo's. "Easy now, I've got you. And I ain't never gonna leave you, neither."

There are all kinds of things it isn't. Like all right, for starters, that his kid of a cousin is the one comforting him. Sensible, is another thing, for him to be standing here in the woods, vulnerable and unarmed. Logical, for a third, that the teenager would be making promises to stay by his side forever. Fair, that Bo is bearing Luke's dark burdens for him.

But what it is – a port in what has been a brutal and unforgiving storm – outweighs all of them. So he holds on with both arms to the lifeline that he is being offered, feels his heartbeat settle against Bo's, strong and steady, until they thump together as one, indistinguishable from each other.

"Welcome home, Luke," makes no more sense than the rest of it, so he laughs at it. At least that's what he thinks he's doing – his body shakes with it and laughing and crying look an awful lot alike, after all. Bo giggles back, and in seconds a pair idiot Duke boys are standing in an abandoned corner of their own property, clinging to each other and howling with a mix of mirth and misery as their poor moonshine runner hisses and leaks her own tears into the half rotted leaves.


	28. Epilogue

_**Author's Note: **I suppose I should just go ahead and point out how this story doesn't always play nice with canon, at least not as presented in _Happy Birthday General Lee_ which seemed to have Luke returning to Hazzard somewhere in 1978 or so. But, you know, I had trouble reconciling that with Luke being in the war unless I had him spending an awful lot of time in the Marines - which I couldn't tolerate in this story. I seem to have limited patience with keeping the boys apart._

_Besides, canon is really helpful in providing me with any manner of loophole that I might want to slip into. Take the boys' final 'shine run. When did it happen? In the pilot we get told they got caught and put on probation "last year." By _Mary Kaye's Baby_ (a scant two episodes later) Daisy says it happened "two years ago." The way I see it, it's all the balladeer's fault. These are all his tales, and sometimes he forgets to tell them in order (which explains Daisy's amazing reappearing yellow Roadrunner in season three), sometimes he forgets the names of secondary characters (which is how season two's Martha becomes Lavinia by season six), and sometimes he tells them a little tall (and maybe after sipping some moonshine, which is about the only way I can begin to explain the alien). So I walked right into the balladeer's convenient loopholes and resequenced some things while disregarding others._

_And here we are at the end of another tale. I don't own the Dukes, Hazzard or the balladeer, but I do appreciate the opportunity to borrow them from time to time. I mean no harm and earn no money. I do thank y'all for coming along on this long and sometimes difficult ride. If I ever say I want to tackle Luke's Marine experience again, please make haste in putting me out of my misery. (Although - wait, isn't this where I make my retirement speech? Yeah, we'll skip that for now...)  
_

* * *

**Epilogue**

_August 1975_

"Hey, Lukas. You with me?"

"Yeah, yeah," he mumbles back though every bit of his attention is focused elsewhere. "There," he points out.

Giggle in his ear, close. Too close, same as that filthy hand on his shoulder.

"Look at them down there. What is old Rosco doing?" Voice louder than a whisper, and that's not good, either. Not to mention that Bo's eyes are fixed on the wrong part of the scene unfolding on the serpentine strip of roadway below them.

Precisely the kind of lapse in proper military behavior that once would have had him just about pinning Bo against a tree, Staff Sergeant style, and giving him what for. Sometimes it feels like the whole damned experience happened to someone else and then some stupid reminder – hanging humidity, the whine of a mosquito, the putrid smell of burning oil, even a backfiring car – will slam his consciousness right back into Vietnam, making him suddenly scramble for a weapon with which to defend himself.

"Take your choice. He's either: A, giving Enos what-for, B, having some kind of a seizure, C, doing his best chicken impression or D," pause there so they can finish in unison, "all of the above."

Today, thanks to the reconnaissance mission that he's got underway, falls somewhere between the extremes. He and Bo have themselves a task to complete; it's tricky and could entail some danger but then again, there's no reason they can't enjoy it a little bit. On their bellies in the red dust of Hazzard, more dirt ground into their clothes than brains in their heads, late afternoon sun glinting through Bo's hair and giving him an orange halo. His cousin would bristle at the notion of himself as an angel – Bo likes to play at being rough, knowing and experienced in the ways of the world – but Luke reckons that it's the boy's unfailingly pure and forgiving nature that's responsible for the upbeat theme that runs through most of their days.

"Come on," he says, sliding out from under that sweaty arm that's been draping itself across his shoulders for most of the time they've been occupying this overlook. Finds his knees, then offers a hand out to the still prone boy in front of him. Time to stop lazing around on their bellies in the dust, giggling at the antics of the local law. It's only a matter of time before the feds show up and the Duke boys' mission had better be at least partway complete by then.

The sun is creeping over the peak behind them, casting long and lean shadows across the land. It's not darkness, but considering that their enemy is about as keenly scented as an addled turkey, there's no compelling reason to wait for the cloak of night anyway.

Not proper military protocol at all when they start down the ridge with Bo's arm hooked across his shoulders. But it's what the boy needs, just like he feels duty-bound to use those code words every now and then – _you with me, Lukas?_ – to reassure them both that Luke is really here, mind, body and soul.

_Everything went to hell when you left_, was Bo's confession as they stood in the woods and watched Tilly froth at the mouth two years ago. _It was like I went crazy, and not in a good way._ Could have been funny, but it wasn't. Because the word crazy was just a stand-in for _out of control_. And Luke had been too tired, too giddy at being home and alive at the time to have properly processed that what Bo's turmoil had culminated in hadn't been the simple destruction of one older, souped-up and once-loved Falcon, but a dangerous crash that could have gotten him killed. _I don't want to feel crazy no more, Luke. I need you back home for real._

It—he would have been a liar if he said it wasn't an overwhelming thought at the time. The kind of thing that made him want, as much as anything, to run off. Or to tell his cousin to just go out and find himself another hero, because Luke's days of being his idol had ended with one lousy summons from Uncle Sam. But Bo's request couldn't have been any more genuine, heartfelt or real, so Luke had lifted his chin from where he'd gotten used to letting it drop, and he'd made himself back into what his cousin needed him to be. And somehow or other, looking after Bo's sanity had brought back his own.

"Watch yourself," he hisses as he sees the soft dirt crumble beneath Bo's feet. By now they've slipped and slid about halfway down the shadowed folds of the slope that'll eventually lead them to the roadway below. Looks like Bo is going to make his journey just a little faster than originally planned, skidding on his boot sole, kicking rocks and stirring up dust all the way. But the boy has grown into his body at last, has learned how to handle himself like the athlete Luke always wanted him to be. He winds up at the bottom of the hill, upright and uninjured, squinting back up against the glare to unleash a challenging little grin – _what's taking you so long?_ Luke shakes his head, hair getting into his eyes with the gesture, and sets his own boot heel into the soft dirt. Shift of weight and he's all but freefalling down after his cousin. Wild, ridiculous, maybe even dangerous – but dirt skiing like this is the sort of fun that country boys like him and Bo were born to invent. And the law, huddled together not more than a football field away from where his fast-moving body gets caught safely in Bo's arms, never even looks up.

"Shh," he whispers, more sound than he would ever have dared to make anytime he came this close to opposing forces back during the war. "Come on."

On their toes like a couple of overgrown kids sneaking out of their bedroom at midnight in a giddy attempt to catch Santa Claus coming down their chimney, two Duke boys approach the lone cruiser, abandoned in a tiny pull off across the road from where the rest of the cars are clumped together. Rosco Coltrane is the closest thing that Hazzard's got to a Marine Sergeant and leader of a squadron, and the man is so rusty in his skills that he doesn't even think twice about where his car gets left or what manner of varmint might just find its way into it.

Wincing against the creak of abused hinges, Luke opens the passenger side door. Checks over his shoulder to see if it's been heard across the street but, "Go fish!" he hears Rosco call, followed by Enos's high-pitched giggle. He and Bo need not worry – the law is fully occupied in deeply important strategic maneuvers of their own.

In truth, Luke reckons those boys in blue over there are managing the best they know how. Hazzard hasn't been a war zone since the time of their great-grandfathers, and they're used to a sleepy routine of doing a whole lot of nothing through the day, killing time until the night when the moonshiners come out to give them a run for their money. It's a few hours before their brains are due to wake up enough to let them engage in a game too sophisticated to be played with a deck that's missing a king of spades and a three of hearts. Enos has been carrying that same pack of cards around since high school.

A giggle escapes from Bo as he opens the driver's side door and the two of them set to work, passing one screwdriver back and forth. Luke shushes him again, but the corners of his own mouth turn up in response to that happy grin that's flashing across the roof of the car at him. In most of the county the sun is setting, but here on the dusty edge of a switchback mountain road, the world is aglow in Bo's smile.

_Cousin_, he'd said, somewhere around a month after that night when Bo had held him tight through the waves of grief over what he'd – what they'd both, really – lost when he'd been called away. _I know I ain't talked you out of the Reserves, and I figure you're going to want to sign up someday. Just promise me you'll wait until you're twenty-one._ Sort of an arbitrary age, but at the time it had been more than two years away. Far enough into the future to seem like forever. After all, Luke had lived himself a lifetime or two during the year-and-a-half that he'd been in the service. Bo's urge to serve his country was bridge to be crossed when they came to it on some far distant day.

And now that there are only three more months before Bo gets there, Luke reckons he'd better brace himself. Because Bo Duke has long since stopped moseying over bridges; these days he gets from one side of them to the other in such a rush that his wheels rarely ever touch the asphalt.

_Serving ain't got to be a bad thing_, he'd admitted. _But I reckon you ought to have more years under your belt than I did. I was just a kid._

Another thing they'd both grieved, right then and there – the end of Luke's youth, which was worthy of a great deal of mourning. Endless days of sunshine-filled play, even the ones that involved hard work. Sure, there had been times when he'd barely made it back to the house and his own bed during harvest, but even those days had been spent on the prettiest parcel of land to be found in the whole south, with his kin never further than a giggle, floating up from one row of corn to the next, away from him.

There's no more South Vietnam to be protected against invasion from the north – four months ago Saigon fell while the very last Americans got pulled out. There's no conflict that threatens to take his cousin's good intentions and turn them into a fight for his own survival. If Bo is going to join the Marine Reserves, right now would be the right time. Luke still hopes, with everything in him, that the boy won't do it.

Bo insists, with all his stalwart Duke stubbornness, on believing that Luke is some sort of a hero. The kind that would sacrifice his own youth so his cousin could go on living his out – Jesse thinks so too, and on some days even Luke is willing to fall for the notion. Only problem is, it's not true. He's more of a coward, really. The sort that figured out that it might just be easier to die than to lose his baby cousin. Given the necessity of making that sort of a decision again, Luke would still choose to let a bullet shatter his own breast over Bo's – complete with the logic that Bo is gregarious and well endowed with blonde charm that could get him past any loneliness (just imagine all the women willing to kiss his sadness away), but it's not that, either. When it comes right down to it, he's not sure that a life without Bo – standing too close, talking too loud, driving too fast, scaring off the wildlife and wooing the women – is worth living.

Cross-threaded screw – and of course it would be on his side of the cruiser, giving his cousin a chance to snicker at how he fumbles with it – so he goes after it with brute strength and a tongue hanging out the corner of his mouth. Aunt Lavinia always used to say that he ought to be careful or one of these days he was likely to just go biting it right off, but that was just one of her wild fancies. Like the one about his and Bo's hearts being switched, but as crazy as that one is, he has to credit it with helping him find the strength to keep on surviving long enough to make it back here. So he pulls his tongue back into his mouth where it will be safe, puts some torque behind his efforts to loosen that last screw, and finally wins the battle.

"No, I ain't got any tens Enos. If you ask me that one more time I'll just, I'll—"

Seems like they're getting this part of the mission accomplished without much time to spare. Any minute now old Rosco's going to get worked up enough to throw his cards into the air, which will send his deputies chasing in all directions to preserve what's left of the deck. Luke tips his head toward the slope to their west, and quietly closing the cruiser's doors, the Duke boys disappear into the trees.

Up is, of course, harder than down even before taking into consideration that they've got more to carry now. Loose soil and gravity are their enemies, but they've been climbing slopes since they were knee-high to grasshoppers. Their feet find the top side of saplings and roots to give them leverage, their hands find each other's to hold onto when the ground wants to give out from beneath them. By the time they crest the ridge to stand where their bellies left dents in the soft earth about an hour ago, the lawmen below have multiplied, fanned out, created a roadblock consisting of a pair of pickups pulled across the lanes of traffic, and begun their patrol for the night.

"Perfect," Luke mumbles under his breath, as two Duke boys head to the thicket of trees where they have hidden their prized possession.

The better part of nineteen seventy-four was spent building, tearing down, then rebuilding the engine, and then there were the days lost to climbing through the junkyard scouring for high performance components. What they couldn't find had to be bought, and while some of the cash came from Luke's military earnings, they also lost weeks at a time to odd jobs that earned sporadic small change. Then there was the search for the chassis, but now their pride and joy sits reflecting the sun's last rays despite the fact that it's stashed in the trees. Orange, not a color made for sneaking, but then again the engine revs loudly enough that they could never use this car that way anyway. A racer, that's what he is, and if he got a military name, at least it's that of a leader that Luke can deeply respect and admire without reservation: General Lee. A man whose head stayed high regardless of the outcome of his struggle, and Luke can only hope to be half his equal.

"You drive," he commands as he slides first their slightly-less-than-legally-gained equipment through the passenger window, followed by his body. Time to disappear into the night, which his wild-driving cousin can manage better than anyone he knows. Oh, the boy has settled down some, he no longer actively_ tries_ to scare the heck out of Luke, though he's been known to accidentally succeed anyway. But if there's anyone that can make a bright orange car get from one end of the county to the other without being seen, it's Bo Duke.

Time, like it knows how hard both Duke boys have to work to keep Luke's attention from drifting to a past he doesn't want to dwell on once the dark dominates, begins to sprint forward. Two fools make it to the safety of their own barn in record time, giggles still mostly swallowed down. The danger here might just be greater than any other part of their night, because a Jesse Duke whipping leaves its mark for longer than the ten years of prison time that they could get for this little caper. And the contraband that their uncle's car is going to carry tonight, well, not all of it is sanctioned by the patriarch.

There are some thing that are best kept as secrets from the old man. It's a decision Luke has made many times over the course of his life, from the time he was a hooky-playing schoolkid right up through the point where he figured out that properly settling back into his life in Hazzard did _not_ entail sharing the details of what he'd seen in Vietnam. The offer to hear him out still stands, he knows that the same as he knows his uncle would forgive him any transgressions to which he'd care to admit. It took him over a year to figure out how to be a veteran Marine and a Duke at the same time, and it has taken him equally as long to accept that the mark of the Corps is more than a haircut or a mostly-faded scar on his upper arm. It's a lifetime that he'll have to carry his memories with him, and he reckons that the fewer of them whose minds are crowded with dark thoughts, the better.

At least the light that the old lantern throws from where it's hanging on the barn's post is relatively bright, and the tool cart in the corner contains the proper hardware to replace that screw he stripped on the side of the road. They won't be in this particular brand of jeopardy for long.

"You ready?" he hisses across Sweet Tilly's roof at his cousin, gets a thumbs up. He's opening the barn door then diving through the passenger window as Bo takes the runner across the Duke farmyard double quick and they both set to praying that if Jesse looks out the kitchen window to see them go, he doesn't catch sight of the extra bump that now adorns the roof of his beloved running car.

They keep to the dirt trails for now – no point in tipping their hand before they even get the old girl properly loaded up with their uncle's fine product – slinking through the night over roots and stones, Bo's steady hand guiding them up to their own still without need for light. This mission is trickier and more complicated than any he's led since his days in the jungle, but his little squadron of two is the most talented and reliable that he's ever had the honor of leading.

"You drive," Bo commands as soon as all the jugs are clinking together in Tilly's trunk. Which just goes to prove that Luke is not a Sergeant here, he's no more than a country boy with a sassy-mouthed younger cousin at his side. And he wouldn't have it any other way.

Besides, he has come to realize that Bo's offer is not one of generosity, but selfishness. Sometimes the boy just plain likes to sit in the passenger seat and remind him how he could be doing a better job of outdriving the law.

He spends the majority of every night – even the insomnia-filled ones – in his own bed now; the rest of his family sleeps better when he does. And if restlessness reigns past the point where he thinks he can tolerate it, he shakes Bo's shoulder then settles at the foot of his bed while Bo slouches against the headboard, eyelids drooping, but willing to ignore his exhaustion in deference to a little late night communing. They pass ideas back and forth like their younger selves would have traded baseball cards – looking at them, considering their merit, tossing them back if they're losers or too common – about girls, races, the ineptitude of the law and next month's harvest. Anything home-grown and Hazzard-bound is fair game. And when they report bleary-eyed for the morning chores, Jesse winks and goes easy on them.

Cruising over pavement, headlights blaring and sailing along at a perfectly legal fifty-five with a trunk load of 'shine and a roadblock up ahead – they're a pair of idiots. That get more idiotic with every mile that passes under their wheels.

"Go for it," he suggests, hears the clank of metal and brief feedback as Bo accidentally bangs the megaphone they borrowed from Rosco's cruiser against the door handle. Boy finally gets it loose and upright, then sticks it out the window.

"Attention at the roadblock," his younger cousin announces in his deepest voice. Not at all convincing when he adds, "This here is Sheriff Little from Chickasaw County," but that's okay. At that same moment Luke flips a hastily installed switch on the dash and the world around them lights up in ever-shifting patterns of red, blue and white, which adds a little realism to what is otherwise a poor excuse for farce. "I'm in hot pursuit of desperate criminals. Open the barricade. I repeat," and there's a frozen moment here while Tilly continues her forward momentum without hesitation and the pickups that block their way stand as immovable as the mountain range around them. "Open the barricade." The nervous crack to Bo's voice – the sort of sound that the real Sheriff Little hasn't made since his long-lost pubescent days of the nineteen forties – gets buried in the squeal of wheels, and the pickups make haste in backing out of the middle of the road into the loose dirt at the edges. Luke laughs at the pop-eyed revenuers who scramble on foot to get out of his way as his foot comes down a little more solidly on the gas pedal. It's going to be a perfectly clean getaway.

His right hand is outstretched, ready to shake Bo's, but his typically distracted cousin doesn't notice it there. A little too busy leaning out the window, still clenching the bullhorn in those fingers that ought to be grasped in a handshake right now and—

"Hey Rosco," comes twittering out, cheerful as birdsong, amplified and distorted by the megaphone, at precisely the same moment as they are passing through the opened barricade. "You lose something?"

"Bo!" he snaps, hand that had been reaching out in friendly companionship now searching for a hold somewhere on the boy's back. Winds up finding belt and yanking the giggling brat back into the car even as his foot slams the accelerator to the floor. "What'd you do that for?" he growls.

But the kid next to him doesn't take any heed of the testy tone to his voice. "Had to do something," he explains as the cars behind them begin to roar to life, their own roof racks – except for Rosco's, because that's the other thing the Duke boys borrowed from his cruiser and mounted on Tilly's roof during this evening's mission – beginning to light up. "It would've been boring," he explains. "If I let you get away with fooling them."

Boring. Luke reckons the boy has a point about that. But if boring means that everyone stays alive and no one loses anything worse than a bumper, then Luke hopes that both Duke boys live long and boring lives. He switches off Tilly's headlights and the lightbar over their heads, mutters a few choice words under his breath, and starts planning how to disappear into the Hazzard night.

"Always a pleasure working with your keen wisdom," he announces. But he's not really angry.

Because life – even in Hazzard, where it twists and winds around crooked laws and switchback morals – is really simple when he looks at the big picture. For survival he needs food and water, to be happy he needs the love of his family. Everything else can just take its place in the dim corners of his mind.

His time in the Marines isn't anything he looks back on with any sort of fondness. It's left him with skills and scars that will follow him for the rest of his days. During his service he figured out that he was a good jumper, a lousy swimmer, a young and inexperienced Sergeant, a powerful boxer, a perceptive point man, a good buddy, and a kid lost in a dark jungle. He learned more than he'd ever wanted to, and none of it matters (or maybe all of it matters, he never can quite make up his mind about that part) anymore because he's a Duke of Hazzard County, and he made it home.

Broad grin from the passenger side of the car. "Yeah, but you love me anyway." And that, right there, is the undying truth. A giggle, a hand squeezing his shoulder, and, "Have fun, Luke," his brilliant cousin advises.


End file.
